


In the Cowbird's Nest

by CaughtAGhost (ghosthan), ghosthan



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon Compliant/Close to Canon, Civil War, Civil War (Marvel), Extremis, Fix-It of Sorts, Getting Together, Graphic Violence, Guilt, Happy Ending, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Love Does Not Fix Trauma, M/M, POV Change, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Skrull(s), Steve Rogers Obsessively Policing His Own Morality and Internal Monologue, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, Tony Stark Objectified and Traumatized in Captivity, Torture, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, just the usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:48:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28177914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthan/pseuds/CaughtAGhost, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthan/pseuds/ghosthan
Summary: cowbird: brood parasites, which lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species.("CW Tony is a skrull. Steve finds out. Will he manage to save Tony?")fic, with accompanying art
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 39
Kudos: 84
Collections: 2020 Captain America/Iron Man Holiday Exchange





	1. the sin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lomku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lomku/gifts).



> I have no idea how I wrote this, but here it is. Anyone wishing just to see art and not read 27k, skip to chapter five.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> This fic was born very fast and very, very close to the deadline. It is un-beta'd, and edited only by my own tired eyes & brain, so all potential mistakes are my own.
> 
> A lot of the dialogue is ripped directly from the pages of CW, or taken and modified slightly. Please excuse gratuitous use of strikethrough to represent Steve's self-repressive inner voice. This is primarily a Steve-centric fic, which was a huge challenge for me but necessitated, I think, by the nature of the story.
> 
> The story is intensely character driven, and sometimes thoughts of characters directly contradict reality, or seem crueler than one might associate with the character. This is intentional, and I hope that the depictions of mental illness, obsessiveness, insecurity, trauma, etc. read as believable.
> 
> I have bent reality slightly in terms of canon, especially regarding Tony's timeline with Extremis; for the purposes of this fic, he has Extremis *including* the healing component and ability to connect to technology mentally during CW. In this story, Steve knows. I do not think this is entirely accurate. Please excuse any other possible minor issues with canon and continuity; I promise I have done my best with research and I worked pretty closely with source material.
> 
> Please don't miss the art, it's compiled in the last chapter!
> 
> Okay, sorry for very long prelude!
> 
> XO XO very happy, happy holidays to you, Oluka, you deserve it! You're such a ray of sunshine in the stevetony community. (:
> 
> _______
> 
> feel free to find me on tumblr, https://ghosthan.tumblr.com/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For more extensive, spoilery content warnings for the entire fic, please see the end notes of this chapter. If you don't want any spoilers, I would avoid the end notes. The tags generally cover it.

one

_the sin_

* * *

It isn't okay.

Steve says to Maria Hill, “Ithink this plan will split us down the middle.”

He says, “I think you’re going to have us at war with one another.” (He is right in more ways than he yet knows.) It’s Cassandra’s curse: blessed with foresight, doomed never to be able to stop the future from coming to pass. Then again, maybe that’s more Tony’s thing. Maybe Steve is better at hindsight. Maybe Steve doesn’t even need to see ahead. All he has to do is look to the past.

It isn’t what Maria wants to hear. Steve’s body senses the ambush coming before he realizes it. His skin prickles. His muscles quiver. Cornered animal. Too many agents. Not enough escape routes. Hands hovering above holsters, itchy, twitchy trigger fingers.

(In hindsight, Steve will find it funny that Maria came to _Steve_ to be the fist of SHRA, to take in his own friends, to lend his muscle to the destruction of liberty. _~~It isn’t funny, it’s distressing; how have I behaved to make her believe I would ever be that person?~~_

She tells him that heroes are having a secret meeting at the Baxter building, and she asks him if he can handle the ones who will rebel.

Handle it.

 _“Handle it._ You’re asking my to arrest people who risk their lives for this country, every day of the week,” Steve says, barely able to contain his disdain. Pinched brow. Narrow eyes. Adrenaline making everything sharp and still. He takes inventory of her agents in his peripheral vision. Too many. Rabid dogs. Maria looks so relaxed.

“No,” she says, and she tilts her chin up, as if she’s looking down at him, “I’m asking you to obey the will of the American people, _Captain._ ”

Rage. Steve tastes it, copper bright on his tongue. He jabs his finger at her, “Don’t play politics with _me_ , Hill. Heroes need to stay above that stuff, or Washington starts telling us who the villains are,” Steve says. He attempts to keep himself collected, but he catches himself posturing. He can’t believe he’s having this conversation. Registration or imprisonment— he’s heard that rhetoric somewhere before and he feels impossibly weary. It isn’t often he truly feels his age, but in moments like this, he wants to throttle this new generation for their short memory.

(In hindsight, he will laugh because in this moment, his only comfort is thinking he will at _least_ have Tony on his side.)

Maria smirks.

“I thought the villains were the guys in masks, who refuse to obey the law,” Maria says pointedly.

It happens like he expects: she sicks her dogs on him. He warns them. No one listens. (No one ever listens.) Steve has to ~~kill~~ hurt people, and he makes his grand exit through a window. He tries not to register the damage he does to the fragile, human bodies between him and his escape. Behind him, the howl of an alarm screams in harmony with the tinkle of shattered glass.

* * *

Tony doesn’t take his side. Steve takes it personally.

* * *

He does not know how to cope with the realization that someone he loves is not the person he had believed them to be. Is the sin his own, in the tender eye of the beholder, seeing what he needs to see? Can Tony be blamed for not being who Steve always thought he was? ~~ _Who Steve needed him to be._~~

The shock of being wrong. It’s like the floor dropping out from beneath him. That gut-clenching panic, a moment suspended in time, reaching with your foot through the darkness for a last stair that isn’t where it should be. The forever-second long descent, and terror, and blindness, and confusion.

The TV is on, and Steve is frozen in place watching as Tony’s image steps onto the screen. The golden stage lights make him glow. He strolls up to the press podium and smiles at the cameras. He dazzles in the spotlight, and Steve is one of the small handful on earth who know how false his public persona truly is; the world may know that Tony Starkis the golden avenger, but they don’t know that Tony Stark isn’t really ~~_his_~~ the real Tony at all. Perfect confidence. Shining facade. Tony’s real armor has always been his TV-smile.

What Steve knows, and what Tony does not say to the American people, is the truth. At that very moment, their friends, _~~Tony’s former friends~~ ,_ are being hunted and shackled like animals.

Steve wants to turn off the broadcast. He can hardly justify the wasted minutes when there is work to be done, but he cannot bring himself to tear his gaze away from the flat image of the face of the man ~~he had loved~~.

The mother of a dead Stamford child accompanies him on stage, a sick prop in their political play. She smiles, but the weight of her loss shows in the lines around her eyes. Steve's seen that face at soldiers' funerals. There is something distinct about the grief of a mother.

“Ladies and gentleman, I’m sure I don’t have to introduce you to Mrs. Miriam Sharpe,” Tony says. The whole world watches. He pauses, appropriately solemn and remorseful. “Mrs. Sharpe, you may recall, lost her son in that Stamford incident and kick-started my passion for the federal employment of all heroes.”

It’s a hell of a way to get the world on your side. The deaths are all still so fresh in public memory, and Tony and his team capitalize on that. Steve thinks it can’t possibly get any more debased and amoral.

And then, Tony lets Spider-Man unmask himself on live television.

_Do you think it’s worth it? How many people will you let ruin their own lives for believing in you?_

Steve had been the fool, and it isn't fair to blame anyone but himself. Steve remembers how long and hard Tony fought to keep his own identity in the shadows. Steve hasn’t forgotten. Maybe he’s the only one to see the hypocrisy in that.

He’s angry, but not irrational; he does not believe that Tony had had anything to do with the attack on him by SHIELD. That had been Maria, through and through, and it had been before Tony had been tasked by the president to bring Steve in. But he’s still culpable in his own way, guilt by association. The sting of abandonment when Tony hadn’t been the one to come to Steve’s rescue, either. How dare he think himself so special; Tony had not stopped the arrest of Steve's cohorts. Why would Steve expect anything different for himself?

~~_You know why._ ~~

He had been confused by landing on such a radically different side of things from his closest friend, but he _has to hope_ that they can come out the other end. If they can just talk, privately, then Steve knows he can talk sense into Tony. Tony is smart. Tony is loyal-- at least, he has been. There must be some misunderstanding. Some gap in their understanding of the situation. It is the only way Steve can rationalize Tony taking the wrong side. They have had their struggles in their past, but Steve implicitly trusts the bond between them, forged by years of breaking and healing. They’ve shared more battles against common enemies than against each other. He tells himself, Tony has simply lost the path. He has a good heart. He can be corrected.

Yet, Steve finds it difficult to shake the obsessive, insecure thought, that he had never really known Tony at all.

* * *

He can’t be corrected.

* * *

Tony sets a trap, and Steve falls for it. An emergency distress call, a chemical plant fire by the Hudson. Four hundred trapped inside. Tony knows Steve well and takes advantage of his nature. What kind of world does Tony create in which heroes ignore any cry for help? It shouldn’t matter what else is going on. Especially in the aftermath of Stamford, it feels like a slap in the face. He could implode with misplaced rage. So frustrated he can feel the red boiling up inside him, burning more hot and toxic than a chemical fire. Oil-slick rainbow in the flames; poison in his clenched heart. Accountability isn’t about registration, it’s about being there, responding to every call, and seeing things through to the end. Being there when the people need them, for the people who need them-- servants of the people, and not government puppets.

Not making problems to further political gains.

They arrive on the scene. The sky glows tropical red against the light-polluted stars. Aside from the murmur of fires burning, it is quiet. Too quiet; there are no civilians trapped here. Cable is the first to clock it as a trap, but by the time he notices, tranquilizer darts begin to rain down, as Steve wheels around and screams out to warn the others.

“ _It’s a trap—_ ” He says, and there is the heavy _thud_ of metal boots landing on the ground, and thegentle hiss of hydraulics. Something Steve never told Tony, or anyone else, for fear of seeming strange: to Steve's enhanced senses, the unique molecular structure of the metal of the armor has a smell. Something subtle, faint. Distinctly Tony's, despite belonging to his second skin, and not his blood-and-bone body.

“Of course it’s a trap,” says the smooth, metallic voice of the Extremis armor, “How else were we going to get you all in one place?”

Steve is so mad he sees red in the moment. It’s strategically brilliant, of course; there is no integrity in it at all.

SHIELD agents in helicopters tranq several members of the resistance group, but they leave Steve standing— intentionally, he realizes. For a moment, Steve has the opportunity to see, first hand, how many of his once trusted friends had agreed to betray him tonight. Standing in the field of burning rubble, his allies unconscious at his feet, he picks out familiar faces on the enemy side— Carol, Hank, Jen, Reed— and he bitterly waits for someone to strike himself down too.

No one does.

Tony walks across the scorched earth to stand in front of Steve.

“Your paymasters going soft, Tony?” Steve spits out, overwhelmed with outrage. He can’t even stand to look at Tony’s face, even with the faceplate covering most of his features.

Tony hesitates. Behind the gleaming gold, Steve can only see his eyes. It’s enough to reveal how conflicted Tony feels— or at least how conflicted he pretends to feel. Steve can see the guilt and fear that Tony masks so well when he’s on stage, playing politician. In the Iron Man armor, though, Tony is more himself. Emotionally vulnerable. Transparent. He can't hide shit from Steve like this.

“We didn’t come here to arrest you, Cap,” Tony says, humbling himself. His false bravado has deflated. The Extremis suit is sleeker and more advanced; his voice sounds more like his true voice and less like a robot, in a way that sounds painfully intimate. “I talked SHIELD into offering you one, final amnesty.”

And he really sounds like he wants Steve to take it. 

~~_Wonder who you had to get into bed with to make that happen. Wonder what else you've compromised._ ~~

“You mean a surrender,” Steve says, clenching his jaw. Tony’s eyes shift, looking down. “Thanks,but I think I’d rather take my chances.” 

A wind blows through the burning lot, gently fanning the fires. It’s quiet, save for the crackle of flames and the low, distant groan of a structure melting in the building heat.

After every dirty play and shamelessly political ploy, Steve doesn’t know how to believe a word Tony says anymore. It's a loss in its own right which Steve will mourn when he has the privacy.

Tony raises the face plate, and Steve goes weak in the knees.

Tony’s skin looks blistered from the heat, which must be nearly overwhelming inside all that metal. He looks so tired.

“Please,” he says, and Steve wants to think he means it, “I know you’re angry. I know it’s an enormous change from the way we’ve always worked, but we aren’t living in nineteen forty-five anymore.”

Steve bristles; leave it to Tony to know exactly what _Steve ~~is thinking~~_ what buttons to press. Tony continues, stepping feebly forward, “The public doesn’t _want_ masks and secret identities. They want to feel safe. We have to win back their respect.”

~~_What about my respect, Tony?_ ~~

In that moment, Steve makes his choice. He isn’t proud of himself. But the anger, and the hurt— it feels suddenly _unbearably_ personal— are larger than any politics. (Smaller than anything public.) Steve feels like he and Tony are the only people on Earth, and he feels like Tony is trying to hurt him on purpose.

Earn back _their_ respect? What about Steve’s respect? What about their friends? What about basic integrity?

Tony watches as Steve mulls it over, like he’s trying to read his mind. Just desperate for Steve’s approval. Black smoke crawls toward the heavens in thick pillars behind Tony’s back. He still catches the light, just so. He still looks golden.

(He makes a decision he will later come to regret, but will never admit to it.)

Steve extends a hand, and the look on Tony’sface will live forever in Steve’s mind. He has never looked so relieved. Like a burning building sagging under the weight of its own melting frame, finally succumbing and collapsing in a cathartic sigh. Tony crosses the gap and takes Steve’s hand so _trustingly_ that Steve almost regrets the EMP.

Almost.

He transfers it from his glove to Tony’s hand, and Tony notices a second too late. Panic flickers across his expression. “What the hell?”

Then he starts convulsing, biting his own tongue, as the little device shocks the hell out of him. Steve feels satisfied, in some sick, fleeting way, but only for a second.

Tony recovers fast, then all bets are off. Everything goes unhinged. Everyone starts fighting, and Tony beats the living daylights out of Steve. He guesses he probably asked for it. The new armor is faster and stronger, and Steve hasn’t been on the receiving end of its power before.

Tony tells him he should give up now, that his armor can predict Steve’s every move before he even makes it. Steve thinks, _that can’t be true_ , but he quickly becomes a believer. Steve counts his own bones breaking as Tony lands blow after blow. Steve likes to count. It’s like some strange form of mediation. Then the LMDs descend, but in the moment, Steve has tunnel vision. He hardly process the flashes of angry white light streaking through the smoke and flames. He _can’t_ keep track of all the other fights, or on the statuses of all of his ~~_soldiers_~~ team. They’re scattered and the world is on fire. Steve's sternum cracks, and a rib, and a jawbone, and, and, and. He sees only Tony.

 _Too many broken bones_ , he reckons. He swallows a mouthful of his own blood and the last thing he sees before the world slides away to dark, is a pile of rubble and a glint of red and gold.

* * *

Goliath is dead, and Steve’s whole body is broken. He looks like Frankenstein's monster. His hair has been ripped out in patches. Sam had flown him out of the fight in time to get Steve medical attention. Even with the healing factor, he’s laid up for a while. He feels his shattered bones knitting themselves together, continental plates scraping ragged edges beneath the Earth’s surface. He’s missing teeth. He runs his fingers over black, spider-leg stitches.

That night, lying awake in bed, he thinks about what he did and he tries to muster guilt for fighting dirty with dirty. Steve cares about integrity, and he cares about doing things right. Steve doesn’t buy into the ends justifying the means. That’s the whole point. He isn't comfortable with himself, and the dissonance between how he sees himself and how he acted today haunts him. He can't bring himself to regret it, yet.

It’s Tony. It has always been Tony. This matters so much to Steve and he had expected Tony to see that. And concede. ~~_If not for seeing the light, then for Steve._~~ There aren’t many things Steve wouldn’t do for Tony, and it feels like this is he time he really needed Tony to be willing to do anything for Steve. It isn’t _about_ himself, but it cuts to the bone and festers. It feels _personal_. What an asshole; he’s _moping_ when a man has died for a false cause. He feels like there’s a hole inside of him, and he wants to whip himself until he bleeds. He deserves to bleed, and so does Tony. There is no blameless man now that their war has a death toll.

It isn’t just about the issue; it’s about loyalty, and trust, and Steve’s so hurt and frustrated that he can hardly sort the rational from the irrational, the icy from the burning. His heart aches.

And his palms bleed.

The thought that he keeps coming back to is that Tony isn’t who Steve thought he was, maybe. The Tony Stark that Steve ~~_loved_~~ knew had never existed in the realm of flesh; a synaptic invention, dancing behind Steve’s eyelids, idyllic false idol. The Galatea to Steve’s perverse Pygmalion. He’s disgusted with himself. Self-flattering romantic, walking through life with his hands over his eyes. How often has he allowed himself to be so blinded by what he wants to see? In Tony? In the world? In himself? He might have once been a jaded relic of the past, but he has made himself a place in the present by believing that the work he does is worth it, for a better future. Anything can be endured if it means tomorrow might be better.

~~_Tony had introduced him to the future, nightclub karaoke and after-hours museum tours, until Steve stopped being so afraid of everything he had missed._ ~~

The bitter truth is that Steve doesn’t matter as much to Tony as _Tony matters to Steve_ he had let himself believe. Their values are even more radically different than he had let himself see, and he had always been able to reconcile this by telling himself that at _heart_ , they want the same things, even if they have different methods.

It’s about liberty. It’s about privacy. It’s about lives lost.

_It’s about Tony, and it’s about Steve, and it’s about poisoned trust and scorched-earth love._

* * *

When Tony sends an encrypted message through a private communication line asking Steve to meet him to talk about how things will go forward, Steve debates telling Tony to go to hell. Then Tony sends a second message, promising he’ll be alone and unarmed. Insisting that he just needs to talk. 

~~_Steve reads between the lines, "I need you, Steve." Wishful thinking._ ~~

Steve goes, against his better judgement.

It’s dark. They’re both dressed in their own idea of incognito. Tony would still stick out like a diamond in a box of rocks if he spent too long in a crowded place. ~~_That’s always true, though._~~ Steve drinks in his beauty guiltily, like a man dying of thirst. He feels like he needs to visit a confessional, still so captured by Tony after all the betrayals. It feels like a crime. It feels like a sin. Stockholm syndrome, _~~why do you still have the power to make me feel this way?~~_ He remains very quiet, leaning against the dugout in the ball field where they agreed to meet. Little League. He watches Tony walk up the field from the street, alone. He had promised himself he would make Tony speak first.

Tony seems uncomfortable, and stops six feet short of Steve. He keeps glancing over his shoulder, as if someone had followed him.

“I appreciate you coming. I know I chose the place but— now I’m not—Can we go somewhere more private to talk?” he asks. Disjointed, distracted. Steve wonders if Tony has been drinking. It’s a cruel thought, but not nonsense, given the way he’s acting.

“If this is good enough for me, it should be good enough for you,” Steve says, “Since I’m the one with a bounty on my head.”

Tony grimaces, and his eyes dart back and forth, like he wants to check over his shoulder again but he’s showing restraint out of a sense of guilt. “I didn’t realize this would happen.”

“I’m not sure what you expected,” Steve says. He sure knows what he expected, and this isn’t it, either. Still, he finds himself second guessing. What is Tony so paranoid about? It isn’t like him to be afraid for no reason. It isn’t like him to put himself in positions where he’s unprepared.

In truth, the Tony before him was the antithesis of the Tony whom Steve had seen on TV screens, meeting with congress and the press and the president. The man before him seemed shrunken in his suit and reduced to nervous tremors. Steve noticed his clothes, expensive but rumpled. A fleck of coffee at his shirt collar. The shadow of unshaven beard blooming across angular cheeks. Unkempt, but trying hard to hold it together. Like he hadn’t hit rock bottom, but maybe he could see it coming at him.

~~_He wants to say, “What’s happened to you?”_ ~~

~~_He wants to say, “You did this to yourself.”_ ~~

~~_He wants to say, “We could make this go away.”_ ~~

~~_He wants to say, “Let me make you better.”_ ~~

He says, “What do you want, Tony?”

He says, “I took a big risk, coming here.”

Tony knows this, of course. He ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck, compulsively looking over his shoulder. Steve wonders if he even notices himself doing it.

“I know. You’re right. Of course,” Tony says. “I’m sorry. I just—” His voice cracks, and he trails off. His hands clench and unclench and clench into fists. A concentrated ball of nervous energy. It’s contagious. Steve begins to feel unsettled.

“You have to stop this,” Steve says. (Later, he will regret this. He’ll regret not making Tony finish his thought. _What was he going to say? What clue could have have given me? ~~Could I have saved him?~~ )_

“I can’t stop it. It isn’t that simple. You have no idea what forces are at play,” Tony says.

Steve will wish he asked about those forces at play; it was as though Tony had some premonition of his own fate. _How? What had he known? What encroaching terrors had Tony weathered alone without a soul to trust? How desperate had he been to have come to Steve out of anyone else, when they were at war against each other?_

Instead, Steve gets mad. He thinks about how Tony always does this. When people don’t agree withhim, he just assumes they don’t understand, that they’re too _simple_ or stupid or limited to get why he’s right. Making mountains from nothing to avoid the problem that is right in front of them.

“It’s real simple, Tony. It’s right from wrong. Maybe that’s too complicated for you to understand,” Steve says, icy. He can taste his own heartbeat, fueled by anger and abandonment and misery. All his skeletons come jumping out of the closet.

“Steve—” Tony says, but Steve doesn’t let him say anything.

“It’s right and wrong. You’re wrong. This is _wrong_. I know you know that,” Steve says, and in the moment, he doesn’t care that Tony seems to shrink with every word. Fucking liar, poor little _imposter_ , taking Steve for a guilt trip when lives are being ruined, lives being lost. He wants to throttle him, and scream _You’re better than this! You’re better than this! Why are you putting me in this position!_

He jabs a finger at Tony, “You don’t think it’s simple? Fine. I can make it simple.”

“Steve.” But Steve has started a thought he can't stop.

“When more of our friends die, it’ll be on you. And nothing I could say will compare to how you’ll feel living with that, for the rest of your—”

“I _know_ ,” Tony interrupts, miserably. “I don’t know what to do.I don’t know what I’m doing. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t mean for any of this. I was just trying to do what’s right. I thought this wasright. I still think— I don’t know what to do. I’m not enough, I’m not good enough for this, but I’m all there is, and it’ll happen with or without us, and _someone_ has to oversee it, someone has to be there to keep the demons in the box--”

He speaks fast and barely above a whisper, fevered and wild eyed. The way he jumps from point to point makes Steve’s head spin, like Tony doesn’t think he can make Steve understand whatever he’s trying to sat. He’s only half making sense, and Steve suddenly wonders when Tony has last slept. The dark shadows under his eyes don’t tell a good story.

“—I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t need you. All of us need you. I have some pull, Steve, but not much. Enough. To get you in, and then you can do so much more than I could hope to. You’d be so much better. You don’t trust accountability my way? Fine. I’m not— I’m not sure I do, either. God, I don’t know what I’m doing,” Tony continues. He pulls at his hair.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. Oh, God. I don’t know what I’m doing. And I think,” Tony pauses. For the first time in their meeting, Tony purposefully meets Steve’s eyes, and the desperation is pitiable and startling. “I think, something is wrong with me. Or, I don’t know. I feel like I’m going crazy. I think someone has been following me. I can’t sleep. I think someone’s following me. Or I’m going crazy. Sometimes at night when I open my eyes I swear…” he trails off. Silent. Whatever he sees at night, Steve is pretty sure Tony is seeing it in front of him now, in the darkness. Something sinister and ephemeral, a thousand yards away. A chill runs down Steve’s spine.

“Stark,” Steve says. “Tony.”

Tony snaps out of it and looks pleadingly at Steve.

“Please,” He says, “Will you please just— Christ. This is pathetic. I’m fucking, I’m so fucking. Christ.” He paces, kicks dirt, wrings his hands. And then the manic energy vanishes, like a wrung out sponge. It's alarming to watch, in a perverse way. Steve is witnessing some kind of psychiatric episode, some imbalance tipping the scales in Tony right before his eyes.

“You need to get help,” Steve says. He doesn’t know what else to say, and in the moment he can’t sort out concern and pity and anger. He feels helpless and wants to get out of this interaction. A twinge of guilt pulls at his heart, but it's clouded by anger and disappointment; Tony was supposed to see Steve's side, tonight.

"Get help. Get-- _ha,"_ Tony barks out a laugh, loud enough to make Steve nervous. “What do you think I _called_ you for?”

(This will haunt Steve for a long time after.)

Tony jams his hand into his pocket and pulls out a crumpled card. A blank business card. It’s written on in Tony’s own penmanship, smudged blue ink, a number.“It’s an encrypted comm line, directly to me,” he says. Hetaps his own temple, as if to remind Steve just _how_ directly Tony is capable of receiving a message, these days. As if Steve needs the reminder of Extremis.

Steve takes the card. “You need to get help, Tony,” Steve says again. He holds it like a live grenade.

As if something has finally occurred to him, Tony goes blank in the face, and self consciously straightens his posture. False confident shoulders. Head held high. No amount of posturing can erase that miserable look in his eye, but Steve would recognize this anywhere: Tony, putting on his true armor.

“Be safe out there,” Tony says, near monotone. He sounds like he has given up. Accepted the reality, whatever that means to him. Or maybe he's just seeing specters again. “I hope you change your mind. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

He really sounds sorry. Steve just holds that card in his loose fist.

“It’s not too late,” Steve says.

Tony smiles, empty. “I hope not,” Tony says. He starts to turn to leave, but pauses. He clears his throat. “And Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t trust anyone.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery, more extensive content warnings:  
> Steve thinks about harming himself in some Catholic style repentance, there is a dubious, one-sided kiss between Skrull Tony and Steve, Tony experiences body horror/torture which is depicted rather graphically on screen, Tony experiences psychosis and loss of touch with reality and has distressing hallucinations, including of implied off-screen child abuse, and a hallucination in which he is decaying, depictions/discussions of weight loss and later weight gain, Steve has graphic nightmares of committing violent acts which include gore, Tony has suicidal thoughts during his time in captivity, mentions of alcohol/alcoholism. This should cover it.


	2. the confession

two

_the confession_

* * *

The thing about rage is that it burns out, with time and distance. Smolders down, into something colder and more bitter, or gives way to whatever the real, underlying emotion had been in the first place.

Steve replays that meeting in his head a thousand times, wondering if maybe he had made a mistake by ignoring a cry for help. He will admit that he has become obsessive; he has no defense to offer. He can't stop playing it out. He can't get Tony's voice out of his ear. He compulsively watches TV and the internet for any sign of Tony, to glean anything from his appearance. However, alarmingly, he spends the next few days conspicuously out of the public eye. Steve spirals; he wonders what Tony could do to himself, if he had enough fear, and few enough friends. On some level, Steve _knows_ what exactly Tony could do to himself.

His worries are soon assuaged.

A week later, Steve turns on the TV in the common room of the safe house. He's not alone; members of his group mill around, tending wounds, making small talk. 

Tony Stark appears on television a week later looking like a different man. His face is the same, and his voice. But his back is straighter, shoulders more confident. His hair looks freshly cut and slicked back. He does not shake. Steve knows Tony is good at masking, but it still strikes Steve as surprising. The Tony he had met just days ago had been held together with staples and bandaids, stuffing spilling out at the seams. That Tony had a long shadow and ghosts in his eyes.

It’s a different podium, and a different news station, but the whole thing feels eerily repetitive.

The golden stage lights look almost green in Tony’s blue eyes. He strolls up to the press podium and smiles at the cameras. He dazzles in the spotlight, perfect confidence.

He leans forward on the podium, gripping it authoritatively with both hands.

“Not this guy again,” Sam says behind Steve, “I’m starting to think he likes the sound of his own voice.”

“Just starting to think that?” Daredevil says.

"I've had enough. Some nerve he has, showing his face after Goliath."

“Quiet,” Steve says, brows pinched together. The press appearance hadn’t been announced in advance, and all their espionage channels have been quiet. None of them know what this is about, and there is a nervous energy in the safe house. A lot of the group is milling around in the common area, and Steve feels them tacitly waiting for some kind of reassurance. They look to him, their leader. So much has been lost. Spider-man in his tattered suit, lip still split and eye bruises, identity burned for a lost cause, is living proof enough.

Steve has little reassurance to provide and he feels useless. He owes them all better. These people have followed him into the dark. He feels like a failure, and he hopes his doubt isn’t contagious. He owes it to them to pretend to be confident, but the truth is, they’re dying out here, and things keep getting worse.

“Oh my god,” Sam says, turning up the volume. All eyes fall to Tony’s image on the screen, as he opens his mouth, and lies without hesitation.

“I come to you all today with tragic news. The anti-registration rogue, known as Goliath, has died,” Tony says, somehow lacking the dignified solemnity and self possession he had displayed in his last TV appearance, with that mother.

The press jump to their feet and waves of unrest move through the crowds of journalists and civilians. Steve frowns.

“I do not enjoy bringing more grief to the family by making this matter public, but the resistance has forced my hand. The public have a right to the truth. And the truth is that the resistance have killed one of their own and in an attempt to frame SHIELD, in a publicity stunt to try and sway public opinion against the Registration Act.”

Someone in the room curses. Steve’s blood runs cold. His first thought is that he can’t believe what he’s hearing. His second thought is of Goliath’s loved ones seeing this.

“Fucking bastard,” Hawkeye says, throwing a crushed soda can in the direction of the TV. He's the furthest from the TV, leg propped up on a table, removing a set of stitches by himself. The soda can bounces off of exactly the spot where Tony's face had been. “That son of a bitch.”

“I can’t believe this.”

Tony continues, “In light of these events, I have committed myself to doubling down my efforts with SHIELD to bring this era of suffering to and end, and bring closure and retribution to the families of all of those who have been lost. We must not forget what this is about. Justice. Justice for Stamford. Justice for the Goliath, even if he himself was mislead by resistance leader, Captain America.”

“Turn this off, Steve,”Sam mutters, resting a hand on Steve’s shoulder.

“Sh,” Steve says without moving a muscle. He feels like Tony is speaking to him directly now. He can feel his pulse in his ears.

Tony says, “With the cooperation of our government, effective immediately, SHIELD will be conducting increased surveillance in areas of high risk, and we will be temporarily enforcing curfew hours in the city—”

“Curfew? Can he even do that?” Cassie asks anxiously. The whole group has gathered up around the TV.

“People won’t stand for this,” Hawkeye says, and he sounds sure of it. Steve isn’t so sure; if there’s anything he’s learned about this century, it’s that the government has gotten very good at using fear to control the public into relinquishing their rights.

“— So please, for your own safety, we ask citizens to remain in their homes after midnight until six AM, unless you have documentation to prove why you must be out otherwise. Our agents will work tirelessly to protect you from the dangerous rogues. And remember—”

He smiles into the camera, making direct eye contact with eyes like emerald in the light, “—if you see something, say something. Our hotline runs 24/7.”

* * *

The curfew goes into effect.

* * *

A week passes. Then they push it up another hour. The streets swarm with police and SHIELD, all hours of the day. Check points pop up in the streets. It cripples them. It becomes close to impossible to make any coordinated movement. They have a close call nearly every day. Their communications are nearly hacked, until they change to a new system. There's a sense of discomfort staying in one place so long. They want to move safe houses, but Steve’s not even sure that they can do that without being caught by SHIELD between locations.

They’re still trying to do the work. Answering emergency calls for civilians, yes, but now they’re spending a lot of time responding to distress calls from other heroes. They’ve become an underground network, a last hope.

None of it makes sense to Steve. He wonders how much pressure Tony must be under from SHIELD to endorse such dystopian measures, and he finds himself thinking about him near constantly. Fluctuating between anger, confusion, and concern. More than anything, he just wants to meet again. He’s had a lot of time to think since their last meeting, and he regrets not asking Tony what he had meant about not trusting anyone. Whatever is going on, Steve won’t find out unless they can talk one on one again. And the more extreme measured pushed by SHIELD using Tony as their figurehead, the more questions Steve has. 

Maybe he's looking for cracks, but he thinks, there's something more going on than what meets the eye.

~~_And he feels a little desperate to see Tony again, in the flesh. He doesn’t know why._ ~~

But he waits. He doesn’t reach out through the encrypted comm line, even though he looks at the little number card every day. The paper has become creased and soft from being carried around in his pocket every day, and handled with such frequency. Steve has always had a thing about handwriting. Call him old-fashioned, or maybe a hippy-dippy artist at heart, but he thinks there's a lot of personality hidden in someone's penmanship. He doesn't buy into the bologna about being able to scientifically analyze someone based on their writing alone, but he thinks, there's something there. He stares at the string of numbers and the few letters and swallows every ink blot and flourish. The tiny smear where the ink hadn't yet been dry before Tony's hand passed over his own writing. Is the Tony he once knew _~~and loved~~ _contained somewhere between ink and paper? A genie in a bottle?

He waits for Tony to message him, for any reason, because he’s afraid of being traced and losing their location. If they get flushed out now, even if some of them make it to a new safe house, their numbers would be obliterated. There would be no way everyone makes it through the SHIELD checkpoints and surveillance unseen. He wishes a message into existence.

The wait pays off.

The message is short. Just as Steve had imagined it would be.

_I have to see you. Just you and me. White flag._

A second message follows a second later. The following message is without words; it contains an address, the dock behind a derelict shipping house. Discrete, Steve things. Private. _Just you and me. White flag._

_White flag._

Steve’s heart starts racing immediately. He sits up in bed, enveloped in velvet darkness. It feels to good to be true. Please, God, let it be true.

He chastises himself for being too hopeful. He must not neglect due diligence. He remembers Tony teaching him how to trace messages. That feels like a long time ago, now. He sits there without breathing for a long time. It feels like if he moves, the mirage might break and the message will vanish. 

One more message appears, lighting up his screen: _I need you._

This snaps him into action. Steve moves mechanically, without an articulate thought beyond the thrumming in his veins. He wears only his underwear and a t-shirt. In the dark, his still-healing scars shine like crescent moons. Stretched, new, shining skin. In bare feet, he takes his phone from his sleeping quarters to the computer room. In their safe house, the computer room is a huge, cold space with a vaulted ceiling, and large screens and metal boxes housing computers lining the walls. All concrete and aluminum. His bare feet sound funny on the unyielding floor, like duck flippers.

~~_Quack, quack. Waddle, waddle._ ~~

Steve isn’t in the habit of wandering around a common area in bare feet and under clothes, but he feels like a man possessed. Without the manufactured control that comes with the serum, and the years of trained calm, his hands might have been shook as he plugs his phone into the computer, and goes through the steps as he remembers— in crystal clarity— how Tony showed him.

~~_Their hands had touched._ ~~

His ~~_cursed_~~ blessed memory replays the sense memory; warm, calloused hands, the smell of espresso and aftershave and engine oil. Hands touch. Replay. Their hands had touched. Over and over, like a skipping record.

The moment it takes to trace the messages lasts eternity between breaths. The screen lights up. Steve clicks to open a map view, pinpointing the location of origin of the message. The truth is there: Tony is at the coordinates he said he is at. It’s no trap.

 _It could still be a trap in a thousand ways_ , but Tony needs him, and Steve has this little scrap of good faith, and it’s enough for plausible deniability. He’s thinking ahead of himself, planning excuses and denials for any possible outcome, like an addict. The only person to whom he owes any explanation is himself, and that's the only person he can't fool.

He thinks about all the times he gave Tony grief for losing himself down a bottle; he thinks maybe now he understands better how desperation could drive a man to act irrationally. Irresponsibly. Steve feels like he's burning evidence as he closes out of the tracking window, and clears any trace of the search (to the best of his abilities) from the computer. He boots it down. The screen winks, black. It is like he was never here.

He slinks back to his room glancing over his shoulder, as if he's about to be caught sneaking out. Not that anyone would be awake or in this part of the safe house at this hour, but he can’t stand the humiliation of being seen— even if he keeps the secret of why he is awake to himself. What would they think of their fearless leader now? It can't be much lower than he thinks of himself. 

_White flag,_ he reminds himself.

He slips back into his room to get dressed. By reflex, he reaches for the blue cowl. He deliberates. Something compels him to loosen his grip and let it fall softly back into the drawer. This isn’t a mission for Captain America; it’s one for Steve. He leaves the safe house, paranoid but undetected, wearing a worn leather jacket and a ball cap. This seems to be becoming his regular attire for midnight trysts with Tony. A shiver runs up his spine as a cold breeze reaches beneath his jacket.

He meets Tony in the ship yard, not far from Tony’s home. It’s late at night, but Tony’s eyes are covered by shades and he leans against a post under a street light. Steve takes in a deep breathe of the salty, reeking air, and the smell of wood rot from the ancient planks of the dock.

“I’m glad you came,” Tony says.

Steve keeps his own head angled down, away from the light. “Are we alone?” Steve says.

“You have so little faith in me,” Tony replies, and he sighs. ~~_I can’t imagine why._~~

“You know I have to ask,” Steve says.

Tony shrugs. “Fair enough. Yeah, we're alone. Do you want to give me a pat down?” Steve clenches his jaw. Tony seems much calmer than the last time they had met; there’s even a little swagger in his voice. Steve can’t read his expression very well with his eyes covered. He wishes Tony would take the shades off.

“I came. I'm here. What do you need?” Steve asks, choosing to cut straight to business. Tony's mouth curls into a barely-there grin.

“What do I need? God. I love to hear you say that,” Tony says, as if he's almost giddy, yet perplexed by Steve's continued devotion. “Even now. You still care _so_ much.”

Except, Steve has thought he was doing a good job of hiding that-- his undying devotion. His pathetic willingness to redraw the line in the sand until he and Tony find themselves on the same side. Steve doesn’t know what to say, and quickly, Tony back pedals, clearing his throat.

“I just mean, Steve, it means a lot to me. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to act around you. I was nervous to see you tonight. And I'm just surprised, after everything I've put you through-- that you'd still. Well.”

Steve is surprised with himself, too.

“In your message, you said ‘white flag,’” Steve says, brusk and impersonal. The black water softly laps at the dock, rhythmic splashing, soft enough to comfortably mask their voices if anyone is listening nearby. “I took that to mean surrender. Things _changing_. You, changing. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Steve holds his breath. He can't stand to hear he's wrong.

“You’re not wrong,” Tony says, and Steve exhales. He hides his relief, barely.It still doesn’t feel quite right. Given all the aggressive measures lately, it seems odd for Tony to fold now. Steve won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He believes in giving the benefit of the doubt, and maybe he’ll finally understand why Tony’s been acting so strange. He’s just relieved that soon, they’ll be putting this all behind them. God, soon this may be over.

“Is it SHIELD making you do all of this? The curfew? The checkpoints? The lies?” Steve asks carefully. He steels himself for an answer he doesn’t want to hear. He wants to hear Tony _admit_ to it, though; some dark, insecure thing inside of him wants to hear Tony say it. Some darker thing wants Tony to beg Steve's forgiveness, so Steve's ego can survive forgiving Tony. He's going to forgive him, either way, he already knows. He just wants to be right. It isn't what he's here for. 

Tony sighs. His mouth is the only part of his face that moves.

“You know me well,” he says, voice tight. “They have me by the short ’n curlies. I haven’t had an inch to breathe. I’m a figure head, and I’m ready to do whatever needs to be done to end this. I want to have each others' backs again, Steve.” He lowers his glasses to look at Steve, and there’s something heavy and unreadable about his expression. Steve's gone, of course. Tony's always known exactly what to say. Steve feels like Tony has gently pushed his fingers through the flesh of Steve's chest, between his ribs, wrapped around his heart. Squeezing. Warm. He can hardly breathe.

It isn’t a win; SHIELD forcing Tony’s hand and Tony letting them isn’t a win by any measure, but some part of Steve cannot help celebrating inside— that Tony isn’t fully to blame, that even if the world is fucked— whatever has long existed between them might be salvageable. That Tony still needs him. (That nameless, ill-defined bond has always meant so much to Steve.)

“Then let’s fix this," Steve breathes. "I told you. It’s not too late for you to stop this. You have to help me put a stop to this." Tony nods, slow, thoughtful. Then, he moves. He goes to the black car parked a few feet away, his expensive shoes squeaking on the wet dock. He opens the passenger side door, and gestures with his hand for Steve to get in, like a gentleman.

"You should come with me."

Steve crosses his arms. “I’m not going anywhere.”

"Would you rather drive?"

"Why should I go anywhere with you? After all your tricks?"

_~~Give me any good reason. Placate me so I can placate myself. I want to follow you.~~ _

“Please, Steve. Just, trust me. I just want to take you to my place. I have some things to show you. I think you’ll want to see. I’ll turn off the surveillance cameras in my place. They wave me right through the checkpoints, perks of the job. And the windows are tinted. No one can see into this car. We can take the stairs, skip the elevator.”

Steve chews his lip. “What kind of things?” He can’t believe he’s allowing himself to consider this.

“Documents. From Congress, and SHIELD. You’ll want to get ahead of this. Big things are coming,” Tony says, sounding genuinely grim. Steve stands there, torn. And then, something gives and he’s getting in the car without really coming to the decision consciously.

The upholstery smells like leather, and Tony's cologne. They don't talk as they drive. They don't talk as Tony pulls into a private parking garage and Steve can't stop looking for some sign they've been caught.

They climb up the back stair case, and he’s not even a Trojan horse, he’s just here because he's trusting Tony. He carefully modulates the joy inside himself; he keeps it small and holds it in his chest, like a bird’s fluttering wing. He will not celebrate until they’re both on the same side for sure and this nightmare is over, but his heart can’t be told so easily. There’s something irreparably irrational about how Tony makes Steve feel. Everyone has a weakness.

Tony brings him into his penthouse and darkens all the windows. He locks the door. “There. You can relax. It’s secure. No one will know you’ve been here,” he assures Steve.

Steve removes his ball cap and sets it on the counter. Tony loosens his tie and goes to the bar.

Steve frowns. 

“Can I get you a drink?” Tony offers. “Bourbon? Vodka? Beer?”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Steve asks. Tony’s brow twitches, and then he plays it off with a laugh.

“Yeah. Not funny? Maybe it's too soon. I do have root beer, though, and coke.”

“No, thank you. I’m fine,” Steve says. Tony opens the fridge and grabs a soda for himself. He pops the metal lid on the edge of the counter top, and the carbonation hisses. Tony wraps his lips around the mouth of the bottle, and Steve sudden'y can't tear his eyes away. Steve watches Tony’s Adam’s apple bob as he takes a long swig of the beverage. Steve looks down and clear his throat.

“Ah. That's refreshing. But, you know. Suit yourself,” Tony says. He wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “I guess you want to get down to brass tacks, then.”

“That would be good,” Steve says, blood still rushing in his ears. Tony nods.

“I’m really glad you came,” he says again. “This way, I’ve got everything in my room.”

~~_Steve is going to see inside Tony Stark’s bedroom_.~~

Steve calmly follows Tony down the hall, into the large, modern bedroom. Something about the way Tony loosely grips the bottle neck between two long fingers makes Steve anxious. Tony quickly darkens the windows, and seats himself on the edge of his enormous bed. There’s a stack of papers on the bedside table. Tony sets his drink beside the papers, on a coaster. Steve glances around, and he feels like he’s seeing something not meant for his eyes. It’s incredibly intimate. What does Tony keep beside his bed? How many pillows does he use? How much dirty laundry is accumulated in the basket? What novel does he pick at when he can't get to sleep at night?

Steve lingers close to the bedroom door, just a few steps inside, arms crossed over his chest. He points to the stack of papers and folders. “Is that it?”

“Some of it,” Tony says. “There's a lot. You wouldn't believe how much _paperwork_ it all it. I’ll show you. C’mere.” He pats the bed.

Somewhere inside Steve’s head, alarm bells chime. He doesn’t hear them over the hot blood pounding in his ears. He wonders if Tony can hear his heartbeat. It’s a silly thought. Steve floats across the room like in a dream, and positions himself just barely on the edge of the bed, uncomfortable but eagerly compliant.

"I don't bite," Tony says, "You can get comfortable."

Steve scooches back a bit, and he feels almost out of his own body. 

"Alright."

Tony leans across Steve's body, his cologne filling Steve's nose. His warmth tangible, despite the inches still between their flesh. Steve grips the bedsheet, as Tony reaches past him for the papers. Steve makes himself a statue. Suddenly, Tony's sleeve knocks his drink onto the bedsheets and all over Steve’s lap. Cold and wet and startling, snapping Steve to reality.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Tony says, “I have towels in the bathroom, hang on. I’m so sorry. Shit.”

He gets up and quickly disappears into the door on the far wall, presumably the master bathroom. Steve stands, uncomfortable and damp. Sticky. The spot on the sheets spreads, and Steve think of Tony’s giant, expensive mattress. He starts stripping the sheet from the bed before the moisture soaks through too deeply. He wrestles with the giant linen, but as he goes to untuck the bottom corner, he makes a startling discovery.

There’s a streaked, dried, bloody hand print along the bottom corner of the bedsheet. Dark, rust red, unmistakably blood. It wouldn’t be visible unless one was on the floor, practically. How could that have gotten there? And Tony keeps his home so meticulous. It doesn’t seem like him to ignore such a stain, if he knows of its presence.

The bathroom door opens and Steve flinches, fumbling to ball the sheet up in his arms so the blood stain isn’t visible. The impulse to hide this discovery surprises him, but he doesn't ignore a gut feeling.

“Oh, God, look at you. You didn’t have to do that,” Tony says, grateful. He comes closer with a towel in his hand. “You can just set it on the ground, don’t worry. I’ll get it washed tomorrow. Here.”

Tony steps into Steve's space. He presses a monogrammed towel to Steve’s leg, patting his thigh where the soda made his pants wet, moving it rapidly up his pants, startlingly close to Steve’s—

Steve jerks.

“Oh, uh. I can, I’ve got it. I can do that. Thank you, though, thanks,” Steve says, heat flooding to his cheeks. He feels crimson. He drops the sheet and fumbles with the towel, sopping up the soda on his pants, willing his confused body not to respond.

"If you say so."

He cleans himself up hastily. When he’s done, he looks up at Tony and that’s all the notice he has before Tony leans in to kiss him.

Steve freezes, eyes wide, gripping the towel with white knuckles. Time stands still, and Steve is a viewer outside of his own body. Beard scraping, wet lips. Tony kisses him with an open mouth, sliding his tongue between Steve’s lips, hungry hands snaking down his waist, down his thigh. Steve finally regains control of his body and pulls away, stunned.

“What—” Steve says. Everywhere Tony's hands touched burns, the skin ablaze under his clothes.

“Let’s not pretend not to both know why you’re here,” Tony says in a low voice.

Steve backs away, undisguised confusion written all over his face, "Why I'm here?" he says dumbly.

“Please. We’re not here to talk about _documents_ , Steve. Come on, now.” He says it in such a patronizing tone that Steve genuinely wonders if he had missed something obvious. He feels absolutely speechless. He feels like an idiot. His face burns. His heart hammers. God, what is he even doing here?

 ~~ _He’s dreamed of that kiss for more years than he can count_.~~ This isn’t how he ever wanted this to happen. He feels oddly violated. He feels like more of an idiot for falling for this kind of pretense than he ever did for falling for a trap in battle.

“Cat got your tongue? You don’t have to be shy, Steve. We’ll pretend it never happened. No one will know. Just because we’re fighting doesn’t mean we can’t make up just for a night,” Tony says. He speaks almost as if they’ve done this before, and that is _definitely_ not the case. After a moment, Tony seems more irritated than confused by Steve’s silence, and throws the towel into the dirty laundry pile with the sheet.

“I can’t believe this,” he mutters. "What a waste of effort."

“I’m sorry, I thought this was serious. White flag. I thought that—”

“You _really_ thought I needed to bring you to my bedroom to show you confidential SHIELD files? I always knew you were more brawn than brain, Steve, but God, I still think I managed to overestimate you,” Tony says.

Steve could throw up. He doesn’t understand how he feels.

He is stupid.

Stupid.

“I’m leaving,” Steve says, gruffly. Too late to save face.

“So soon?” Tony says sarcastically. “You better take the back again for your little walk of shame.”

Steve could die on the spot. As he stumbles out the door, he hears Tony say, “Watch out for those checkpoints, Steve. I hear it’s never good to be caught out past curfew without legitimate business. I hear SHIELD's really cracking down.”

Steve slinks home with wounded pride, still reeling from the turn of events. He can’t seem to cool down the burning heat in his ears and cheeks, and it’s more from the shame than from the fear of being caught out.

In the morning, his clothes still smell like Tony and sickly sweet soda, and humiliation.

* * *

There’s another raid. This time, they lose three of their numbers. SHIELD only shows two of them cuffed and imprisoned on live TV, and that night, they hold a moment of silence for the third because they already know what must have happened.

Tony does a broadcast about a humane new program called Resistance Re-Education Training, which he’s planning to implement in the prisons. Steve doesn't want to think too hard about what this means.

A week later, the curfew is pushed up again. 9 PM. CNN runs a piece about people being harassed by agents in the streets; the footage is horrifying. _Regular_ people, non-hero people. There’s blood. Broken teeth. Weeping.

When Steve looks for the broadcast online later, he can’t find it anywhere. It’s been taken down from every video sharing site. Like it never happened.

And then people start disappearing.

Spider-Man leaves the cause. He has the integrity to say goodbye before disappearing. Steve tries to set him up with a head start, to hide well, but he doesn’t have much to give anymore. God knows the guy deserves it, after everything he has given.

Goliath’s grave is vandalized and Tony does a broadcast about the importance of taking the high road. Moral integrity. Resilience of spirit.

If Steve had ever been a drinking man, he would start on the liquor around this point.

Tony always looks off in his broadcasts, too. Strangely rigid in some ways, yet simultaneously too comfortable in his own body, too pleased with himself, too smug. He puts his name on every horrible act, his new brand of philanthropy. He’s got his fingers so far down SHIELD’s throat that Steve can’t tell if it’s SHIELD pushing Tony around, or Tony pushing SHIELD around, anymore. It’s too hard to get a read on any of it from such a distance, and the feeling is only made worse when Steve recalls the last time he saw Tony in person.

He had seemed wrong then, too.

Erratic and angry and _strange;_ too much a shift from the stuttering, paranoid mess he had been when they saw each other, that night in the ball field. The night Tony had given Steve that white card, which Steve still carries around like some kind of charm. Then there had been the off-color comment about the drink as if Steve would find it funny, and the sudden ~~_kiss_~~ physicality, and the blood smeared on the bottom of the bedsheet.

They’re losing numbers. They’re losing morale. They’re losing. And whatever is happening, Tony’s at the center of it. Tony and some kind of secret. Steve becomes obsessed with the idea of a change, but he says nothing to his colleagues. He’s sure they’re not too dense not to notice, but they grant him the dignity of not mentioning Steve’s rapid decline into obsessive paranoia.

Steve decides on a new approach. Whatever is happening to Tony, he needs an answer. Irrefutable evidence. One way or another.

Sam helps him with the stealth and tech, and Steve couldn’t be more grateful for a friend who doesn’t ask too many questions. It isn’t easy. Tony Stark had already been one of the wealthiest and the most tech savvy man in the free world before, but now he also has the benefit of a government espionage and security agency at his disposal. It’s almost an impossible task.

Almost.

It takes them weeks of staking out, and painstakingly reaching out to sources, combing through all their access channels, bleeding the last of their resources dry. They lose more people. Steve forgets to grieve, it just stops turning on-- or maybe it never turns off. They have a close call with a raid in the same neighborhood as the safe house. That’s a hard night for all of them. Trapped like rats, totally at the mercy of chance, unable to do anything but wait to live or die. Steve starts to think he’s losing his mind.

But then, it comes together.

Steve spends another night camped out on the rooftop of a building across from Tony’s penthouse, equipped with surveillance technology lifted from SHIELD. High powered scopes and binoculars, and a sonar gun that’s useless through Tony’s reinforced glass windows. His line of sight is extremely limited; he only has a view of one third of one of Tony’s rooms, and Tony keeps his windows darkened more often than not.

It’s 1:30 in the morning. Snow falls. Steve is just another shadow. With the curfew in full swing, and the blanket of white muffling every sound, the city is as silent as the grave. Steve can hear his own heartbeat. His ears and nose grow numb and cherry red.

Tony enters his penthouse late that night, presumably kept out late on some despicable SHRA business. He arrives in armor. Surrounded by snow, Steve suddenly draws a likeness in his mind between the armor and a Christmas ornament. Tony spends approximately two minutes between the elevator and entering his suite. He spends approximately four minutes out of sight entirely. Steve measures his breath and waits. He half wonders if Tony came in and went straight to sleep.

But then, he sees, magnified by the super binoculars, a red and gold figure steps into Steve’s line of sight. Gleaming.

Tony goes to the bar. He picks up a bottle and pours himself a generous drink, back turned to he window. Steve hates to see it. He keeps watching, as Tony flips up the faceplate and tosses his drink back. He turns to face the window—

And he isn’t Tony at all.

The air sucks right out of Steve’s lungs.

A green, impish face. Smug, even without smiling. A broad, wrinkled chin and pointed ears. He pours himself another drink, gnarled fingers like claws, and shucks the armor, piece by piece. A lizard stepping out of his skin. He’s _green_. He’s wearing Tony’s favorite three piece.

He’s a skrull.

Tony Stark is a skrull.

The world spins. Steve struggles to process this, but it’s like the past few months have been violently turned on their head. Like the skyline is folding in on him. He has been a skrull for _how_ long— Steve has no idea when the switch was made, what has been Tony and what has been done fraudulently in his name.

The world feels like it’s falling away. His ears ring and he nearly drops his binoculars. Everything changes suddenly, like a switch flipped. This is bigger than he ever considered. He’s gutted by the guilty _relief_ he feels; it’s a genie wish come true. Steve had wanted nothing more than for this Tony not to be ~~_his_~~ the real Tony.

_Careful what you wish for._

* * *

The relief is short-lived, and Steve is plagued by more questions than he has answers for soon after his discovery. His reality now a fallacy, he finds himself second guessing every thought he’s had, every decision he’s made. Repeating and analyzing throw-away interactions, trying to read meaning into every blink, sniff, and sigh.

When exactly had the change been made? At what moment had Tony stopped being Tony? What could Steve rightfully hold him culpable for, and what sins were committed by his double? The uncertainty makes him feel like he’s losing touch. He’s distant, and distracted. His team notices. Steve doesn’t know what to tell them. He doesn’t know who to trust.

The ugly truth is that whatever anger and betrayal Steve had felt of Tony, many of his allies hold pure hatred and contempt. They would be happy to see Tony dead, after everything. Steve never felt that way, not really, but now, he second guesses. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment— when he thinks with adrenaline and blood instead of memory— violence appeals to him, like a dark siren song luring him closer to the rocks. Flashing images, bruised knuckles, the ringing of the shield reverberating from a dead-on hit, dented armor, bloody teeth— impulses to show Tony what he’s earned, _you made your bed now lie in it._

But that’s not Steve; that’s never been what he really wants, even if the monster in him surfaces in moments of weakness. He thinks that sometimes his worst fears blur into his desires, and he tries to lend himself enough forgiveness to know how destroyed he would be if he ever truly hurt Tony.

But things are different, now.

And the more pressing concern comes to him in a haunted echo of a trembling voice. Tony, scared and unshowered and paranoid, like a deranged drunk in the streets. Looking over his shoulder. Buzzing like a firecracker.

 _I think someone has been following me,_ Tony had said. _Don’t trust anyone._

The guilt is like fluid in the lungs. He feels like he’s drowning in it. Tony had known something. Had Tony known? What sort of fear had he lived in, in the time leading up to his being replaced? Had he convinced himself he was delusional? That he was unravelling? Steve had believed it.

Steve’s stomach clenches when he remembers how he had reacted; he hadn’t believed a word out of Tony’s mouth. He’d suspected him of drinking, of having a nervous breakdown. He’d told him to get help. Tony had asked him for help.

~~_He needed me._ ~~

Steve feels sick. He sits numbly in his seat in the main hub of the safehouse; he’s alone. These days, the others keep to their own quarters when they’re not out running rescue missions. Everyone nursing their wounds in private, or maybe avoiding Steve and his gloomy mood.

Who can he trust?

He’s lucky that even Sam hadn’t been present in the moment of the reveal, that night on the rooftop, because Sam might be a skull. Steve realizes with a slow, crawling feeling that _any_ of his closest allies could be green imposters. He has to rely only on himself, and if he lets on that he knows about the skrulls, he could be putting himself— all of them— in danger. He has to play his cards close, and he has to finish what has been started. Maybe he can’t stop SHRA. Maybe he can’t stop the skull invasion, because it’s too big for him to see. Not alone, anyways. One man against legions.

But he can stop that son of a bitch who has been wearing Steve’s ~~_loved one’s_~~ best friend’s face like a mask. He can kill the imposter of Tony Stark.

He calls a meeting, and the tone is grim as the others trickle, in a few at a time. The toll that this war has taken on them all shows in the flesh. Arms in slings and butterfly stitches, violet bruised cheeks, and grey hairs, and glassy eyes. Too many empty chairs. So much lost.

When everyone has seated themselves around the round table, Steve stands at the head and clears his throat. He looks haggard in the dim, flickering fluorescents. They’re a band of ghosts, defined more by what they’re missing than by what remains.

“I want to thank you all for you courage, and for coming here again today when I asked,” Steve starts. “I know how much you’ve lost. All of us.”

_They don’t know the true price we’ve paid beneath our noses._

Steve can’t help but sweep his gaze around the room, meeting the eyes of everyone, one by one, as if he could somehow tell on sight alone if there is a Judas among them. “The truth is we’re hemorrhaging resources. We’ve lost good men and women. We’ll lose more,” he pauses. “But. I want to ask you all to follow me one more time. You owe me nothing, and none of you should agree to come along lightly. This might be a suicide mission. But—”

He leans forward. Everyone watches him, an energy present that had been absent before. Steve drawing from some hazy idea of the leader he is to them, he tries to be that man. He doesn’t remember how to inspire hope. This is almost hope. Not hope, but something like it. A prayer to hold onto.

“—It’s time we make a stand,” Steve says. He looks down. “We have to kill Tony Stark.”

* * *

It feels wrong to call him _Tony_ , now, even in his own head.

They make a plan. They set the trap. Steve couldn’t be more proud of his ~~_soldiers_~~ team; all of them choose to go with him to make their stand, even knowing the risk. Steve doesn’t know what will happen. Lives might be lost. Any number of them might be taken. And yet, they come.

They don’t realize that they’re fighting two wars— one against SHIELD and the Registration act, and one against an invasion that the world hasn’t even noticed yet.

It ends like this:

Their Judas comes in shining armor and his army, but Steve notices distinctly fewer of his actual friends on the devil's side. Carol is gone. Jen is gone. Reed. All of them. It’s mostly just Tony and SHIELD agents. That makes Steve feel marginally better. He tightens the strap of his shield, securing it to his arm. He’s ready to go down fighting, and he can hold on to the fact that in the end: it’s not heroes against heroes. It’s heroes against SHIELD and an imposter. God knows how many imposters. If they’ve replaced Tony, Steve has to assume any number of SHIELD and government higher-ups could be imposters as well.

He can hold on to that.

He wonders where the real Tony is tonight.

His ~~_soldiers_~~ friends fight valiantly, and they follow the plan: cover Steve at any expense so Steve can get to Tony. They’ve suffered enough injustice to be on board with murder, even without knowing this Tony is an imposter. The thought is sour in the back of Steve’s throat. This murder-suicide mission has two purposes. Stop SHRA, yes. And to clear Tony’s name.

It matters.

It ends with Steve counting his broken bones again. It ends with one of his arms numb and blood filling his lungs and his uniform shredded down to flesh, bodies littering the ground. Steve can’t stop to take their names. When he gets an opening, he takes it.

This Tony has a different fighting style; he’s crueler and blunter. Clumsier as a pilot, but the smart armor makes up for this disadvantage. Steve could tell the difference between the real Tony piloting a suit of armor and any imposter. They’ve fought together too many times.

“You’re fighting like you’ve got something to prove, Steve,” This Tony says, barely dodging the shield when Steve aims for behind his knees. He counters and fires up his repulsors. Steve rolls to the side and takes a blast to the shoulder. It had been intended for his chest. He hisses and barrels toward the armor, shield first. This Tony knocks him backward with an unyielding, metal fist to the jaw.

Steve swallows a tooth. He gasps for breath.

“I’m ending it,” Steve says.

"Oh, you're ending it, are you?"

Tony’s laughter sounds distorted and inhuman through the modulator-- then Steve remembers how true to life the new Extremis voice box is. This imposter Tony is laughing like a maniac; he doesn’t understand, yet, what Steve is here to do. What Steve knows. What Steve is willing to lose to get what he came for.

“The only way this is ending is with you _shackled_ and behind bars, Captain. I’ve had enough of your shit. Enough of your meddling. You think you’re so righteous? You’re arrogant, and pathetic,” he says, and he throws Steve through a brick wall. Something else breaks. Steve’s breathing is severely labored. He lies in wait; he does not rise.

Tony seems surprised.

He lands, wobbling, on the rubble. It crunches under his feet as he steps closer to loom over Steve. “You’re like a roach, aren't you? Hard to make you stay down, little insect. Maybe I should put you down for good.”

Steve smiles darkly. 

“Now you’re getting it,” he says. Tony pauses.

“What?”

Steve hooks his foot behind Tony’s ankle and ignores the screaming pain in all parts of his body as he brings Tony to the ground; the suit can’t predict a motion that Steve doesn’t indicate. The momentum topples the imposter, not accustomed to the weight of the armor, before his reflexes kick in. There isn’t a second to spare. Tony loses balance for a split second and Steve defies gravity. He throws himself onto Tony’s chest, pinning him to the ground with his thighs.

Then he starts beating him.

~~_Maybe this is the true me. Maybe I wanted this all along. Am I enjoying this? Am I a monster?_ ~~

It feels senseless. Gratuitous. His pulse pounds in time with his fists, and every part of him bleeds. Tony cries out, garbled and broken though the dented faceplate. Steve ignores it. It’s now or never and he can’t lose his nerve. He came here with a purpose, and an untold toll has already been reaped to achieve that end. He’s going to kill him. The story has been written and the ending always had to go this way.

It feels unnatural to keep beating someone who is down.

"Stop."

“I know what you are,” Steve grits out, low enough that only Tony can hear him. His voice is thick and hot, on the verge of tears from sheer exhaustion. He brings the Shield down over the face plate, over and over and over. It must be disorienting enough that Tony— not-Tony— can do nothing but flail his arms in a discoordinated attempt to wrench Steve off of him. The face plate crumples and Steve rips it off, shoulders heaving.

It lands in the rubble several feet away.

_Oh, God._

Some part of him can’t separate reality from the visceral feeling that he’s killing ~~_the man he’s in love with_~~ his best friend, and not some parasitic replacement. It’s Tony’s eyes, looking up at him in stunned terror. Tony’s high-bridged nose, mashed to a pulp. Tony’s broken teeth, and viscous blood in Tony’s beard.

“Don’t do this,” he wheezes, and there’s not an ounce of smugness left. Tony’s voice. A perfect copy.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and he means it. Steve doesn’t think. He can’t allow himself. He brings the shield down one final time, with a wet crunch.

He doesn’t look as he finishes it.

Tony goes still beneath him. Silent. The fighting around them has died down, too. The air is still and quiet, dark in an all encompassing haze of smoke. There is only death, here. Nothing lives.

Steve pants raggedly, fluid in his lungs; he had held himself together with adrenaline and a sense of purpose that both rapidly flee from him now that the job is done. Leeched dry, empty. Husk. 

He looks down and doesn’t realize he’s crying until one of his own hot tears drop from the tip of his nose and falls onto the mangled, green face.

Pointed ears. Wrinkled chin. Green and unfamiliar. It isn’t Tony at all. It never was.

Steve still cries, and he can’t stop himself. The feeling overwhelms him, it just comes rushing in and he drowns in it all at once.

“God,” he chokes. “My God. I’m sorry. _Christ_.”

He chokes. His vision blurs. He could lie down beside the corpse and close his eyes and pretend they're both asleep, until Steve slips away to that other place. As broken as he is now, he still can't quite believe he'd ever be allowed the release of death. ~~_Prometheus_~~.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he says. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

A hand grabs him by the shoulder. Steve flinches, jostling several broken bones. It's only Sam behind him, though. He stares down in masked horror at the green carnage under Steve.

“You have to get out of here, Cap, they have backup on the way,” Sam says to Steve through grit teeth; it doesn’t look as though Sam has fared much better than Steve. He looks broken, and tired, and just barely able to stand on his own. Steve can’t ask how many they lost, or who. He’s just glad Sam’s still standing. He feels like he’s drowning. Is it the blood in his lungs, or the fact that he can’t seem to make himself breathe evenly? The way an empty opens like a tear in spacetime and sucks what's left of his spirit out of him. Everything starts to feel far away. Like walking through a world wrapped in cotton.

“I killed him,” Steve says. He’s still sitting on the chest of his victim. Corpse pinned between his knees.

Sam takes Steve by the hand and struggles with his weight, pulling him to his feet. Steve staggers. His strength is totally gone. 

“It’s not him, Steve,” Sam says, glancing at the green flesh poking out of the armor on the ground. A distant helicopter drones in the sky close by as it closes in on them. By the sound of it, SHIELD is close, but they’re afforded the benefit of being cloaked in the dense smoke and haze. “You have to go, Steve. You need to go. Come on. It’s going to be okay. We’ll be okay.”

"It's over."

"Yeah. I know," Sam says grimly. "It's over."

Steve looks at the false Tony one last time. He feels ~~_everything_~~ nothing. Maybe he’s in shock. Maybe he’s lost too much blood. Probably both. He looks to Sam and sees his own lost expression reflected back at him. They’re all lost, now.

"You have to go, Steve," Sam pleads. He sounds as tired as Steve feels.

“Okay. Thank you,” Steve says. That’s all he can say. There are no words that could approach the debt Steve owes to Sam. Sam claps him on the shoulder, and gives him a squeeze. Steve watches his friend’s wings unfold as he prepares to take flight again. The silhouette of a helicopter crawls by through the orange glow of flames shining against the haze.

“I’ll keep back the choppers, and that should give you cover for a minute. You won't have long. I don't know how long I can... Just. Get to somewhere safe. They’ll be looking for you.”

 _No_ , Steve wants to say. _No._

A fresh wave of empty tears and fear and loneliness. He’s never felt so _young_ , and he wants to beg not to be left alone. _No, what if I never see you again?_ It’s his personal apocalypse. He can't remember ever being so scared in the war. Back then, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, it felt like he would live forever. Now he knows that he can-- but it's a long and lonely life, when those around you just keep dying. He can’t lose anyone else. Even his physiologically enhanced brain is only capable of processing so much grief.

It doesn't matter. The choppers descend. They'll be out for his blood. He only has one choice. He only ever has one choice.

“Be safe, Sam” Steve says. Sam salutes. He disappears into burning sky.

And Steve disappears into the shadows without looking back.

* * *

He breaks into the morgue, and it’s no easy task. Top clearance and security; SHIELD doesn’t want the skrull incident to get out yet. Steve imagines they had been in for a shock when they found the body left behind.

The room is dark and cold.

The empty suit of armor has been laid out on the coroner’s table like a corpse. The body of the skrull inside is in a drawer; Steve doesn’t need to see it. The parasite has been removed, and Tony himself is still dust in the wind. Steve spends a few slow breaths standing barely inside the room, with the door open at his back. The light behind him from the hall casts a long shadow across the concrete floor. He exhales. He steps fully inside. He lets the heavy door fall shut with a muted thud and an icy rush of air. Then all is still; all is stale. All quiet and dark in a room for the dead.

He crosses the floor and there’s a jarring echo as he pulls a metal stool up to the table. His body reacts with the revulsion and dread, as if he in the presence of a real corpse, and not just the lobster shell of a missing man. The rational part of his mind knows how foolish it is to feel so horrified by a piece of empty metal. The rational part of his mind, however, also knows that this _is_ as good as Tony’s corpse. Too much time has passed without any sign of him. There is no trail. There are no leads. They didn’t even notice he was _gone_ until Steve discovered that someone else was in his place.

~~_He deserves better._ ~~

The most unsettling thing is that Steve doesn’t definitively know what the last moment had been, when he had seen the true Tony. Had it been it on the news? Had it been the night they met in the ball field? Had it been the back of Tony's head, worrying over a cup of coffee, walking in the opposite direction, so distracted that he didn’t notice Steve watching from the shadows?

Had it been the funeral for the Stamford children? Steve hadn’t been in attendance.

It’s impossible to say with certainty, even if he can guess based on the changes he had noticed as things got worse. Some range of times when Tony had stopped seeming like Tony. But the nature of the beast is that all of them had ceased to be themselves for a while. Their world had been ripped apart.

~~_They had ripped their own world apart. It had been their own hands, and their own flesh, and now all Steve has to show for it is a shell._ ~~

“I’m sorry,”he says out loud, testing his voice in the stillness. His echo apologizes back to him, muted and bouncing off the concrete walls, _sorry, orry, orry._ Too little. Too late. And now he’s here, begging forgiveness in a crypt.

He finds himself suddenly overcome by a morbid desire to touch the armor, for some kind of sense confirmation that any of this is real.

He tries to think of what he would say if Tony could hear him now. The realization strikes him, how this is a fool’s errand. There is no closure here. No satisfaction, no catharsis, no absolution. He has never felt so acutely _pessimistic_ as he suddenly does, a sinking, slippery darkness that swallows him like bog mud.

Grief, at least, brings with it pain, making it _nearly_ tangible; but grief is a symptom, and the cause is still a gordian knot. The Registration Act and SHIELD, skrull fingers puppeteering the government, bitter final words between he and Tony, corpses half-buried in the rubble, fires in the skies. His best friend disappearing into a haze of smoke, not yet since heard from again. There had been no cathartic peak, no release of tension, no relief. Just a slow hemorrhaging of spirit, and life, and self.

Steve finds it oddly appropriate. All he has left of Tony is a shell; all that feels left of himself is not much more.

Steve has spent a lot of his life believing that confrontation leads to resolution, facing things head on. It’s almost true. When all the good guys are easily identified, surrounded in an echo chamber of friends congratulating each other on a job well done, it becomes easy to forget that there is always an after. A next day. What to do when you throw all of yourself into a conflict and there _is_ no cathartic, explosive relief? What about when nothing gives, when the dam cracks, but holds? When you think that singing tension will eventually give way to a satisfying _snap_. The thread just stretches, and sags, and you’re still bound. You’re still tied. But the pull is gone, and the world moves on.

Bruised, next-day knuckles and clenched jaws and radio silences, checking compulsively for some change that doesn’t ever come on its own, friendships grown apart, funeral bells, grave soil. Even the hottest fires burn out eventually, self cannibalizing. All that remains is ash. Nothing left to rekindle.

The empty feeling emboldens him. Steve’s fingertips tingle. He swallows a lump in his throat and reaches over, gently taking the empty helmet and faceplate in his hands, the skull. Alas, poor Yorrick. He handles it delicately, like a faberge egg.

_Grave robber._

He turns it over in his hands, barely allowing himself to breathe. The metal is ice against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again, out loud. The dark eye slits stare back at him. He’s not used to seeing the helmet without Tony’s blue eyes behind those slits. He doesn’t know if he’s ever looked at the armor so carefully, up close, without Tony in it before. He’s never thought of it as an object, but as an extension of Tony. How wrong it feels to treat it now like some inanimate thing.

“I wish you were here, right now. I know you’re probably gone. But you deserve a proper burial. You deserve better than this,” Steve says to the inanimate faceplate. “I knew there would be a war. When Maria told me about the Act, I knew it would split us all down the middle. I knew it would destroy us. But I never expected how. I don’t think I could have. You did, I think. I think I see that, now. Sometimes you do things that I don’t understand. I don’t see ahead like you do. But I see where we’ve been.”

He clears his throat.

“Maybe that’s where we went so wrong. We needed both of us, to see the full picture. I wish we could have landed in the same place. I wish—”

~~_I wish you could have taken my side. I wish I could have trusted you. I wish I helped you when I had the chance._ ~~

Steve’s eyes feel hot. His vision blurs. He blinks it away and breathes slowly, willing himself not to lose it. Even if Tony is dead, or gone, and the armor is just metal, it feels important that Steve say all he has to say. He must get this out.

“I need you to know I was always thinking of you. Even in the end, when— it was always you. Through all of this, the thing I was most scared of losing, was you. I knew we might never be friends again. Never partners. Never—”

~~— _Never more than friends, never more than partners. We would never have a chance, after this war._~~

Tears rolls down his cheeks, his eyes sting and he grinds his teeth. The sob builds inside of him like volcanic activity. The pressure becomes unbearable. The grief is more than his Pandora’s box can contain.

He sits there sobbing over Tony’s ~~_empty grave_~~ armor.

“I didn’t know what was important, when it mattered. I’m _sorry_ it took me too long to realize what mattered.”

Even in the dimness of the morgue, the alloy of the faceplate shimmers, iridescent. A glint that Steve would know with his eyes closed, the unique molecular structure throwing light in _just_ a strange enough way that Steve could tell the difference between it and any forgery.

He wonders, suddenly, what would have happened if it _had_ been Tony all along. He set the ~~_skull_~~ helmet down with a sudden sense of revulsion withhimself, that he was almost relived Tony was gone before that point. Skrull or not, his perfect memory would never manageto burn out the sense memory of beating Tony Stark’s face to a bleeding pulp in the streets, the rasp of his last breath taken under the weight of Steve’s body pressing down on his lungs.

Would it have come to blows, if it had been Tony all along? He wants to think he would have been more reasonable, even if Tony was wrong. Even if Tony was stubborn and insolent and causing catastrophe. He wants to believe that if it had been Tony all along, that eventually he would have stood down, and seen his error, or hell, maybe he would have made Steve see whatever the hell it was that Tony saw so clearly. He wants to believe that if it had been Tony, that no one would have had to die for them to realize that war is not the way.

The truth is, he’ll never know.

All he knows now is that if by some miracle he could get Tony back, Steve would know better than to ever let something tear them apart again. The truth is, nothing could be worth it. He’s chosen the most worthy hill to die on, but he hadn’t accounted for this, and so there couldn’t be anything worth it.

“I don’t know if I can live with what’s happened,” Steve says, and he means it. He doesn’t know how to go forward, except with the small purpose of finding a body. One day at a time, and when that is done, he honestly doesn’t know what he’ll do next. How he’ll find a way to wake up every day. “And for all the back and forth— and all the things we’ve said, and done to each other… For all the cruel things I’ve said. For everything I never let you say—”

_The memory of Tony shivering in a ball cap in the dark._

Steve shivers.

“There’s one thing that I’ll never be able to tell anyone now. The one thing… the thing I should have told you—”

~~_I love you._ ~~

“—But now,” Steve whispers, gently wiping his own tear off of the faceplate and setting it back on the table, “I can’t.”

He’s quiet for a long time. He can’t stay much longer; the guard will change any minute and Steve will lose his window to slip out undetected. He isn’t done his work yet, so he has to stay vigilant. He has to go.

“I’m going to find you,” Steve says.

The armor says nothing.

“I’m going to find you, Tony.”

He let his eyes fall shut. He tried to conjure up some image of God. All he can see is Tony.

_I have learned my lesson. Please, God. Let this have been a lesson. Give me a chance to show that I have learned. Let me find him, dead or alive._


	3. the contrition (and penance)

three

_the contrition (and penance)_

* * *

It’s easier to shut down his emotions after his visit to the morgue.

Steve goes all the way underground. He's smoke in the wind. He doesn't say goodbye to anyone. The news speculates about hispossible death. His allies see him as little as his enemies. At this point, he can’t be sure who are who, anyways. Every night, green eyes haunt his short, restless fits of sleep, curled up in abandoned buildings, safe houses, sewers.

He spends his days searching for Tony’s body. He spends his nights praying not to dream.

He finds that weathered notecard, still in his pocket. In smudged, blurred ink, the number for Tony’s private comm line; it doesn't matter that it has become difficult to read, because Steve has committed the sequence of numbers to memory by heart, anyways.

It’s stupid, but Steve sends a message when he wakes. He does it the next day as well, and he compulsively glances at the communicator for any indication of a reply periodically. He doesn't expect anything, but he checks. He gets into the habit of checking the line first thing every morning at dawn. Chilly early sunlight, compulsively refreshing. He sends a variation of the same thing, every morning. (Like a prayer.)

_I’m looking for you._

_I’m going to find you._

_If you’re reading this please tell me where you are._

And while he doesn’t expect this habit to yield any helpful result, it becomes a comfort to him, and one consistent part of his day. A sort of ritual; the first thing he does in the morning is write a message to Tony, and it’s the last thing he checks before going to sleep at night.

There is no trail to follow, so Steve makes up an exhaustive, systematic approach. He uses the laptop and some of the skills Tony had taught him to use a very rudimentary algorithm to compile empty buildings and lots. Needless to say, it’s no small number. He starts close to home and radiates outward. It's not easy going, especially in the beginning. SHIELD slows him down, but by himself, he’s slippery, and elusive. There are risks he can take as one man, and there are cracks he can slip between.

With so little information, and with no one to depend upon but himself, it gives Steve the perfect, all-consuming mission to lose himself in. Somewhere along the way, he stops feeling entirely human.

He squats in filthy, damp places at night. He doesn’t wash his clothes. He’s so deep underground that he doesn’t even show his face in corner stores or bodegas when he can avoid it. It’s like Steve Rogers had never existed, and that’s just fine by him.

That isn’t to say that Steve ever unplugs from the news. He is obsessive, following any and every broadcast about the limbo-like status of the SHRA, now that its figurehead and the figurehead of its opposition have both vanished. Steve and Tony’s absences have shaken the world. Without leadership, it seems both sides have taken a pause as they regroup and figure out their next steps. Steve watches C-SPAN on stolen iPhones, and it appears that approval for SHRA has come to a confused halt in the wake of the news breaking that Tony might not have actually been involved with every step that the government _claimed_ he had been involved with.

This, of course, is messy.

SHIELD hasn’t released the fact that Tony had been replaced by a skrull, likely because they want to avoid mass hysteria— or, less altruistically— they don’t want the skrulls to know that SHIELD now knows. Yet, Tony is obviously gone, and this can't be kept from the public because they're used to seeing him regularly making appearances. It puts SHIELD in a sticky position; they can’t make no statement, and they can’t definitively declare him dead.

Instead, it’s heavily insinuated that Tony has been on some vague _bender/vacation/psych ward visit/kidnapped_ , (they all but encourage people to speculate), and that someone has been signing documents in his name from the inside, as a cover up. SHIELD pretends to launch a department-wide investigation, there's talk of imaginary whistle blowers. The world demands accountability; they’re angry that they’ve been fooled, and SHIELD pretends to be ashamed.

If only people could know just how fooled they've been. It’s a clever cover up. It makes Steve want to be sick, seeing Tony’s name dragged through the mud again. Especially speculation about his drinking; that’s the hardest to hear, because through the mess of it all, he’s pretty sure Tony stayed sober. The real Tony, anyways. Maybe he'll never know. It bothers him, distantly. Like an itch. 

It is both harder and easier to keep up with what’s left of the resistance from afar. Steve can tune-in to their channels and spy through back door networks, but most of their communication hubs are dead these days. There is a little chatter, and Steve doesn’t know if that’s because they’re too careful to say anything of import over any distance after their encounter with SHIELD, or if they’re disbanding without him.

~~_Or maybe every last one of them died fighting your fight. In your name._~~

He thinks that this might have been just what the skrulls wanted when they planted one of their own as Tony. The heroes torn apart and bitter, dead and disbanded, leaving a hollow world. A weakened world. How many of his friends had been skrull plants? How many SHIELD officials? It keeps him up at night. Better off alone.

One problem at a time.

Seasons change.

Steve’s beard grows in and his hair gets too long. His suit becomes filthy. His face grows weathered and thin from working tirelessly for a lost cause. His tongue probes the hole where one of his missing teeth should be. 

Months pass.

Steve doesn’t let himself think too much.

At some point, communications in the resistance channels die entirely. Radio silence. Steve hopes, foolishly perhaps, that he has just moved too far out of range.

* * *

months earlier

* * *

The last night Tony spends in his own life is spent torturing himself. This is appropriate.

Tony sits crosslegged on his bed, fully dressed in a rumpled three piece. His hair is limp and tired and the skin beneath his eyes feels like paper. When he goes long enough without sleeping, he feels it in his eyes. Heavy and dry, and he catches himself staring into space at nothing.

He had met with Steve last night. (It hadn't gone well.)

It had almost been the final nail in his coffin; he had thought about detouring to a bar on his way home. Instead, he’d taken himself home and thrown himself back into the work. The phantom taste of scotch is there, still, in the back of his throat. Taunting him, the memory of warmth as he swallow, despite never having touched a drop. And if scotch would make the shadows stop moving at the corners of his vision, maybe it would have been worth it. The paranoia never eases, and thoughts of the drink follow him around, as well as the bogeyman he swears is always a step behind him.

Call him crazy; he’s sure someone has been watching him.

Following him.

He hasn’t dared say it out loud to anyone but Steve. His fear is that he _is_ crazy, or that people will think so. He feels unstable enough that he might not know the difference. Right now, a lot rides on his being competent and capable, or at _least_ in people believing it. The joke is that Tony has historically been the least stable of the Avengers, even on his best day. He’s all loose threads, the drink, the paranoia, the nightmares, the guilt, the anxiety, the crippling fear of abandonment— and he can’t seem to stop himself unravelling. Frayed.

He locks his doors and triple checks them every night. He lies in bed, trying to sleep some nights, but the feeling of being Watched comes over him like a tangible shadow, and it becomes unbearable. When this happens, he turns on all the lights. He checks all security feeds. And then double checks. (And then he checks the locks again.)

There’s rationally nothing to worry about; all the security in his penthouse is coded to respond only to his biometrics, so unless someone borrowed his eyeball, his finger print, and his passcode, there’s absolutely no way an intruder could make it through. That isn’t even accounting for the security cameras, all equipped with smart technology and facial recognition. He would _know_ if someone had been in here who is not meant to be here.

And yet.

The crawling, creeping feeling eats him away to nothing. He struggle to focus his mental energy in any other direction. Put himself into the work, put himself into charity, put himself into constantly fiddling with Extremis. Making notes, dreaming up improvements. He's never been _less_ productive, though. His mind feels like a wrung out, dried and crusty sponge. He’s scattered, unhinged. Terrified. Delusional. Is it mental illness, or intuition?

He thinks, _it depends on who you ask_. Tony has this premonition that he’s going to die. Checking the locks sends it back into the shadows of his mind, but only fleetingly. It always comes back, the black dog of death. The sound of an extra set of footsteps when he should be alone. Delusional paranoia, or a well-informed hunch? When you’re right so often about how every worst case scenario will play out, it becomes difficult to attune when you’re being paranoid. Tony's paranoia has saved him enough times in the past.

He hasn’t changed clothes or slept since he saw Steve. Come to think of it, he hasn’t had a proper meal, either. The sunrise this morning had been exquisite, and Tony had spent it fighting roiling nausea after a few hours spent terrorized by the nighttime. He keeps refilling the same glass with ginger ale (and pretending there's something more in it.)

It doesn’t do the job and he tries not to think about it.

Their conversation runs through his head on replay. He’d practically _begged_. His hand had tremored, and Steve’s expression in the dark had been impenetrable, and disgusted. It had been an embarrassment. Pathetic.

Surrounded by a sprawl of thick government forms and manilla folders, Tony massages his temples. He mutes his newsfeed, and he shuts down all internal communication capabilities temporarily. Quiet, he just needs quiet. Fifteen more minutes, and maybe he will be able to sleep. God, just a good night's sleep. _And if not, there’s always tomorrow._ He finishes anther glass of ginger ale, and it churns in his nervous stomach. He sets the crystal cut glass on the nightstand.

The hunted feeling comes.

He first senses his visitor when he sees a reflection in the glass. Dark, sliding like an eel in a murky riverbed. Tony jolts and looks up, pulse quickening— but by the time he knows what’s happening, he’s too late to stop it.

There’s a needle in his neck, and it does something strange to him. He feels convulsive, and paralyzed. Extremis glitches, blue screen of death; it is frying his systems. It's frying his brain. Tony gags on his own saliva.

The figure standing at the foot of his bed is a mirror image of himself, but better groomed, smiling with something like pity in his cold, green-tinted eyes.

“Oh, Tony,” the skrull says. Tony’s eyelids start to pull shut, heavy. Internally, everything is going down. System after system crashing, and his biological systems fare no better. His lungs forget how to expand and contract. His fingers and toes tingle, freezing pins and needles. He’s going down. “Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll take it from here.”

Tony panics, but he can’t breathe well enough to hyperventilate. The lack of oxygen sings in his chest, counting him down to unconsciousness. His mind spins and slides like a broken gyroscope. He slumps onto the bed, muscles giving out on him, one by one. His body is failing him and the white, screaming panic of being trapped in a broken body is all too familiar. A doomed passenger.

He doesn’t understand how this is possible. He tries to summon the under suit, he tries to reach out for help through Extremis. He should be able to connect effortlessly to communication lines. To SHIELD, to the authorities, to Steve, to anyone—

But it’s as futile as flexing a phantom limb. Nothing happens and Tony gasps for breath like a fish as his thoughts become hazy.

“Wha— th’hell did you d’to me?” he slurs. “Who’re you?”

His doppelganger smiles.

“I’m Tony Stark,” he says.

"No... " Tony says

Tony’s vision splits and multiplies like he’s drunk. The irony doesn't escape him. The world is a sickening kaleidoscope. He fumbles with what little muscle control he has left for the glass beside the bed. It smashes on the corner of the bedside table. Tony gropes for a shard of glass, too impaired to control his grip. He feels it slice deep into his palm, and hot blood trickles down his wrist.

The false Tony Stark steps closer, and in the moment— terrified and hurt, bleeding— Tony looks up at himself and thinks, _God, I do look like my father_.

He tries to swing the shard of glass like a knife, but his arm goes offline and drops limply to the side. His balance shifts and the next thing he knows, the world rolls and rushes by. He feels the wind knocked out of him as he falls off the side of the bed and hits the floor.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Tony-Howard purrs. His voice sounds like three people speaking in unison. The world swims. Howard-Tony affectionately caresses Tony’s cheek.

Tony is eight years old and drunk on bourbon. Tony is seven years old and he’s got a fever and Daddy’s mad. Tony is five years old and can’t speak right and his father kneels beside him and grabs his face, _get ahold of yourself_ , _Son,_ and Tony wants to cry.

With his last bit of momentum, he tries to slap the double’s hand away. He severely miscalculates the effort it takes to move. His hand just barely grazes against the bottom corner of his own bedsheet, leaving a single bloody streak. Then he goes totally limp.

As he loses consciousness, he sinks into a dark fog, some endless night, where a dozen green hands reach down his throat and pull him apart from the inside out.

* * *

Tony’s first day of being an object is spent drugged out of his mind and bound tight enough to cut into skin. Mouth hanging open, tongue lolling. He barely remembers a minute of it, and it’s probably better that way.

When they first take him, they move him several times. Tony would not know this except that sometimes he opens his eyes, and if he's feeling really sharp, he notices the walls are a different color. Whatever they use to sedate him obliterates Extremis, and pushes him down into a kaleidoscopic stupor.

When he’s awake, reality is as thin and fragile as spun sugar. He sees things that aren’t there. He hears voices. He forgets himself; one moment he’s being forced to swallow a feeding tube roughly by someone with a blurry face and green hands, and the next moment, he’s begging Jarvis to not to leave his room, he hadn't _meant_ to wet the bed, he doesn’t want Dad to find out.

Then the needle prick, a skrull drawing his blood, then the scene changes again. He’s crying and his mouth tastes like bourbon, and he just wants Ty to _love_ him. He just wants Ru to— He just wants Jan to— he just wants Steve to— _He just wants to be loved. Why was he born unlovable and pathetic? He is as wretched as a featherless chick left abandoned in a nest full of broken shells._

Hours later, the spell breaks and he catches himself hoarse and confused blinking visions away. Every time there is a pulse of shame when he realizes he’s been muttering to himself in an empty room.

Eventually, he thinks, they stop moving him. Time is hard to measure— it moves like a snake between doses of tranquilizer— but he’s woken up many times in a row in the same concrete room, and he starts to expect the familiar scenery.

Nothing else is familiar. He spends most of his time heavily sedated, fed only through a tube, without Extremis keeping him strong; his body has become a foreign thing. His ribs and sternum jut out beneath his skin, like rungs of a ladder. His shriveled stomach dips in under his ribs, and bits of his hair fall out from his head, his brows, his chest and stomach and pubic mound. Boxy sharp hips and gnarled, knoblike knees. He gets sores and bruises where his bones make contact with the ground.

In those rare moments, when he’s aware enough to form thoughts, he thinks, _I wish I could go home. I wish I'm not alone._ He knows that there had been trouble at home— in his old life— but it feels so trivial and far away now. Back when he was human, back when he had the pride and agency to get into trouble, he didn’t appreciate human contact. Now, he would do anything to go home. Whatever seemed insurmountable then feels like a road bump, now. He laments the waste of his life, and he feels quite sure he will never have the chance to go back and change things. It doesn’t matter how desperately he prays, chapped lips moving silently in the dark. He will never go home. He will never rest in a bed again. He will never see Steve again.

 _Steve_. He had been fighting with Steve. Something important. But how important could it really have been?

Needle prick. Drugs. He drops into another haze.

Wake up.

Needle prick.

Wake up.

 _Traitor_.

Needle prick.

Needle prick.

Needle prick.

_There's right, and there's wrong._

Time slides on without him. He senses missing large chunks of time, but that's as precise as he can guess. The track marks on his neck accumulate and itch but he can’t move his arm high enough in his bondage to scratch at it.

The skrulls are his nurses and doctors and nutritionists. Some avoid looking at him when they can manage it, but some seem to take pleasure in his miserable, deteriorated state. They keep him alive, but just barely. Anything beyond what is strictly necessary is considered a luxury, and Tony knows he hasn’t earned any luxury. Distantly, he wonders what he would have to do to earn a luxury. He thinks he doesn’t have any integrity at all anymore. He would do just about anything if they would just give him a blanket. Or five minutes out of his bonds, to scratch every miserable itch.

He’s been held captive before; he thinks he was never so weak. He blames it on the drugs. He blames it on the routine. He blames it on his age. It feels like there are hands inside his brain, people digging around inside of him. Animals in a trash bin. Rearranging and molesting, no part of him feels untouched. The drugs are like a blender on his subconscious memory, and the nightmares of the day mix seamlessly with the horrors of his own dreams. His thoughts corrupted, his mind half gone, his body weakened and strange to him.

He doesn’t need his full mental capacity to default to self-flagellation; he’s wired to assume he deserves this, and somehow the self loathing makes it easier to endure.

* * *

Tony has been a thing for a long time.

* * *

Things are the same for an eternity.

* * *

Needle prick.

* * *

And then, one day, it changes.

He wakes up and waits for the needle prick. Ghosts from dreams already slipping from his memory dance in his peripheral. In the blackness of his cell, his mind invents lights and shapes and figures where there are none. Tony’s learned to ignore them. Mostly. But they don’t give him his shot.

He hears bangingand a thud in a room above him. The ceiling of his cell trembles under hurried footsteps above.

He’s been awake too long without anyone coming in. It’s a break from the invariable routine upon which he’s come to rely. At first, he’s excited by the change— any kind of change— to break the monotony. Perhaps today they will kill him. His heart races with dark excitement. Maybe at least they’ll move him. Maybe he could jump out of a moving vehicle, if they leave him awake for transport.

There is another loud noise.

He hears footsteps outside his room, running past the door. And more. Back and forth, muffled voices, an energy of unrest. Then, Tony hears a key hurriedly jammed into the lock. The door flies open. He looks up in hazy confusion as Joe runs into his cell, not even bothering to shut the door behind himself. Tony catches his first glimpse of what the hall outside his room looks like; it’s also concrete, and it looks like a residential basement. Dark, plain, and unimpressive He has built this place up in his mind to be some kind of impenetrable, isolated fortress. He had assumed he was in a bunker of some kind. Maybe out in the mountains somewhere. Tony feels disoriented.

Joe goes to the corner of the room where they keep the records of Tony’s vitals. He starts tearing pages from the binders. He throws them into the waste bin and drops a lit match into the basket. The paper catches flame with a hiss and a crackle, and the room starts to fill with grey smoke. Tony coughs.

“What’s happening?” he says. His voice sounds like a stranger to him. The words feel clumsy in his unpracticed mouth.

Joe ignores him. He tears out pages from another notebook and drops them on the fire, muttering under his breath, “ _Fuck, fuck, fuck—”_

Tony frowns. He rattles his chain weakly.

“Hey. _Hey,_ " Tony says. "What’s going on? What’s— _gack_ — what’s happening?” He coughs midway through, the smoke burning his eyes and nose. This isn't good. His captors panicking has Tony panicking; he relies on them entirely to be kept alive, and he knows he ranks very low in the hierarchy of priorities, if there is some kind of emergency. He is a thing, expendable. He can be thrown away. His stomach clenches.

Joe runs pasts Tony, but then seems to pause, just for long enough for uncertainty to flicker across his green, wrinkled face.

“Shit,” Joe says, turning back toward Tony. He produces a needle and kneels by Tony’s side. Tony coughs some more, tears starting to form in the corners of his eyes as the paper burns itself down.

“Please, what’s going on? Jus’ tell me wha’s happening. Are we leaving? Are we going?” Tony asks. He sounds pathetic, but he’s terrified. The thick air is suffocating, and his chest feels too tight already. Joe preps the needle. Tony’s stomach drops when he sees that Joe’s hands are trembling.

He fumbles, moving quickly. Tony swallows. “Are we going?” he repeats.

“ _We_ are, us. _You’re_ not going anywhere, Stark,” Joe says grimly. He tests the needle, squirting tiny droplets of the substance into the air to make sure there is no air in the vial. The syringe is filled all the way. Tony realizes that he doesn’t think he’s ever been given such a large dose, that he can remember. It’s at least double his normal amount. Joe jabs it without ceremony into Tony’s neck and depresses the plunger.

And _then_ Tony processes what was said.

_You’re not going anywhere, Stark._

His eyes go wide, and it feels like his heart stops. “You can’t leave me here,” Tony says, and the drug begins to saturate his system. His words sound like a funhouse echo, and his vision starts to skip and slide and swirl. He’s sinking into a house of horrors, the terror becoming a hallucinogenic parody of itself until Tony can’t breathe. “You can’t d’that, please don’ leave me here.”

“That’s what you get, huh?” Joe says, glancing over his shoulder as though someone might come in at any moment and tell him off. “We don’t need you anymore. You’re disposable now. And we only have time to take what we need.”

Tony wonders if Joe had been tasked to put him down; it seems like he’s taken it upon himself to make sure Tony suffers as much as possible on the way out the door, and there is no recourse. No one will spare a second glance into his cell and notice his heart still beating as they abandon ship. And he knows already no one will rescue him. (No one ever does.)

The heavy dose is paralyzing. He feels mummified. He hears carnival music riding in his ears, distorted and haunting and not real. Gravity pulls him down, down, down.

“Please,” Tony slurs through numb lips. “Kill me. Don’ leave me.”

Joe stands up and throws the needle at the trash bin full of paper, which has already burned down to ash. Tony spasms weakly on the floor. Tony gags involuntarily, and he hears a record scratch sound, but he isn’t sure if it’s real. Big spots of darkness bloom, ink blots across his vision. Everything splits into fractals.

“Don’t worry,” Joe says, “You’ll die. Eventually. Fuck you, Stark. And fuck your hero buddies, too. You can have Steve Rogers to thank for this. He killed one of ours ugly? Well, we know how you feel about him. We’ve been in your head. Consider it payback.”

Tony’s mouth is slow and clumsy.

It feels like it takes him forever to say, “Who’s Ste’ Roge’s?”

Joe is already gone. The world fades to black.

* * *

He slides through the depths, pulled by a strong current. Sometimes he floats through perverse, nightmare versions of familiar places. Familiar voices sing his name, and he feels a burning in his throat, and an ache in his skull. They’re not real dreams; they’re fragments, viscous and warped by the sedative molasses flowing through his veins. A few times he nearly surfaces— but something heavy pulls him back down, and he slides a while longer.

When he wakes up, his mouth is a desert and a white hot pain radiates from the back of his head all the way around to his eye sockets. The pain pulses in time with his sluggish heartbeat. He’s disoriented and too stiff too move.

He may have been mistaken when he used to think he was a person; he suspects that maybe, he has just been a confused piece of floor all along. He lays there a long time, weak, dizzy, head throbbing; he can’t quite remember how to make his muscles move. Twitching his fingertips seems an impossible task. _I used to be able to move like a living thing._

He’s pissed himself, but he feels mostly dry, now. It’s been some time. The room reeks of urine and soot and smoke and sweat, and rancid dry mouth breath. His throat tastes like copper, and he’s too parched to even swallow.

He forces his eyes open after a long while, and doubts if he even managed to open them: the room is total blackness, just as though his lids were still shut.

It’s silent, too. There are no footsteps coming from any other part of the building. No whir of the heating and plumbing. No hum of computers in other rooms. Tony has been left alone to his grave, and he wonders if he’s dead already.

If this is death, he wishes suddenly he had fought harder to live. He can’t stand an eternity of this. He never wanted to become a corpse. He’s rotting. Rotting. Rotten.

And he thinks it long enough that his dehydrated, sensory deprived mind conjures the sensation of his flesh crawling away. Despite the total absence of light, he watches maggots crawl across his arms, and he feels mushrooms sprout from his mouth.

He closes his eyes again.

* * *

He dreams about gold in his bones. Green hands cracking them open and sucking the light out, like the sweet flesh from a lobster claw. _Crack_. _Crack. Slurp_.

He feels a tingle, deep down inside.

* * *

He dreams about a man with sunshine in his eyelashes.

* * *

_Rebooting._

_Error._

_Insufficient._

* * *

He wakes up again, and this time he’s more aware. It’s a blessing and a curse. He doesn’t hallucinate maggots, or wonder if he’s a piece of the floor. However, he has the presence of his mental faculties, enough to know how dire his situation is, and he thinks he’s dying. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here like this, but when you get close to that edge, you feel the the depth of the plunge. You hear the drafty, sucking void below. And you teeter.

His skin is loose and paper-like. His ears ring, and it’s a welcome annoyance compared to the dreaded monotony of the silence. If he had the strength, he might try and beat his head against the ground to speed things along. He can’t find it in himself to sit up, though. And his head hurts so bad already.

God, his head hurts.

* * *

He dreams about freckled shoulders and Irish red ears and a garden snake with blue scales that sleeps on a warm rock, and white lilies and honeysuckle and pollen drifting through a blue sky, like summer snow.

* * *

_Rebooting._

_Error._

_Insufficient—_

_Rebooting._

_Success._

_Please wait. Connecting. Connecting. Connecting._

* * *

When he wakes, his head still hurts. But there’s something else. Tony blinks. And then— feebly, shaking— he manages to sit up. It takes all his strength. The rattle of his chains startles him, the first non-imagined sound he’s heard in a long time.

Something better than blood flows through him. Something golden. Something _warm_.

His dad is sitting beside him in the dark. He’s hallucinating, but at least he knows it, kind of. He feels a little paranoid. (It seems sort of real.) In the vision, his dad is old. Older than he ever got the chance to become in real life. Tony doesn’t feel like he looks much like him at all.

Howard says, “You stupid idiot,” and Tony nods.

“Why, though?”

“You would have killed yourself. All you had to do was wait for the sedative to wear off. You would be dead right now if you bashed your head in.” Tony nods. He doesn’t get it. He nods anyways.

“I don’t understand,” Tony says. His lips move, anyways. His throat is far too dry for speech.

Howard gets older. His hair grows long and white. He looks like Santa Claus, but skinny and mean. Tony could laugh.

“You’re so dumb,” Howard says. Tony nods. “You just has to wait for the sedative to wear off, and Extremis will come back on. And you can call for help.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tony says. He couldn’t have thought of this plan on his own. That’s him, though. Always riding on Daddy’s coat tails.

* * *

When Tony next wakes, Howard is gone, and his mind has cleared enough to know that no one was ever really there. And he can sit up, still. And he remembers his own name.

And he remembers Steve’s name.

_Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers._

It all starts flooding back, then. Not everything, but enough. His strongest memories are of Steve, anyways. And Steve is all he needs. This he knows on a primal level, and the rest of the missing pieces don’t matter. It’s reflex, falling back on him.

Accessing the internal communications through Extremis is like riding a bike; Tony closes his eyes, and opens the private communication link between he and Steve. There are hundreds of short, one line messages waiting for him, flooding his mind as they all suddenly load at once.

_I’m looking for you._

_I’m going to find you._

_If you’re reading this please tell me where you are._

Tony calls for help.

* * *

The message comes while Steve sleeps.

He doesn’t sleep often, but when he does, he’s become prone to slipping into deep, nightmare-filled comas. The nature of the work exhausts him to the bone, and when he lets himself close his eyes, his body succumbs quickly.

All of that which he represses during the day comes off the leash in his dreams, though.

In his nightmares, he brings his shield down over Iron Man’s face and crushes his skull and waits for the flesh to turn green, and the true form to be revealed. He can’t breathe while he waits for that green to come, nor can he look away. And in his nightmares, it never comes.

Steve sits on Tony’s chest as he gasps his last breaths and goes still, eyes open wide in empty horror. His face destroyed, blood everywhere. And he never turns into a skrull. He stays Tony, as if there had never been an imposter. As if Steve had murdered him in cold blood. He guesses that’s because he’s so scared that he’s just hunting down a ghost.

He _knows_ it’s a body retrieval mission, but some part of him has held out a modicum of hope that there’s a chance Tony is still alive, somehow. It’s stupid, and childish. Maybe intentionally self-delusional. Maybe Steve doesn’t know how to do anything without making it out to himself that it’s a for good cause.

He sleeps in an abandoned house, on a mildewed sofa. The walls are bare, the wallpaper sun bleached except for in rectangle shaped patches where there must have once been frames hanging.

He dreams bloody dreams until his buzzing communicator wakes him, and that other, transient world evaporates. Dew in the heat.

_Communicator vibrates?_

He jerks awake, scowling, heart racing. There’s that disoriented moment between awake and asleep when he can’t quite connect the sound to a source, and he thinks someone has tracked him down. He calms when he realizes he’s still alone, and he notices the screen of his communicator alight.

_One new message._

Steve freezes, holding in a breath. Nobody knows how to find him anymore. As well as the world knows, Steve Rogers had fallen off planet Earth months ago. This shouldn’t be possible. His pulse quickens. He sweeps his long, dirty hair out of his eyes and opens the message, squinting at the brightness in the dark.

His heart leaps into his throat.

_Steve. Please help. Trace this message. I don’t know where I am. I don’t think I have long._

The message isn’t signed. It doesn’t need to be. In a communication thread containing hundreds of messages on the right side of the screen, indicating that they were all sent by Steve, this is the only message received in response.

The sun rises, and the peach colored light floats in sideways through the east facing windows. In daylight, the wallpaper has a faded rose petal pattern. There are water stains on the rug. Steve sets up his laptop at the broken coffee table and plugs the communicator in.

He does it just as Tony taught him.

He traces the message to a house only three towns away, a rundown residential neighborhood. The whole while, Steve’s heart never really relaxes, he doesn’t feel like he dares to take a full breath. So used to disappointment, he looks for any possible disappointing answer to explain this. A trap of some kind. A glitch. An old message, only somehow picked up now, months too late. He can think of a lot of reasons to be pessimistic, and yet, the knot in his stomach is what hope feels like.

Steve doesn’t dare message back in case it _is_ some kind of trap, but there was never a chance of not going. The hope is sweet poison; he’s high riding on the feeling.

He packs his things, and forces himself to move methodically. Think rationally. He washes in the rusted bathtub with water from his jug, and shaves in the dusty mirror over the sink. It isn’t for vanity’s sake; if Steve intends to waltz into a residential area, and if he intends to get there quickly, he’s going to be seen. He can’t wait for nightfall to move in the over of shadows, slinking from alley to sewer to riverbank. He has to blend in.

He’s been living like an animal for a long time. He shucks off his filthy uniform and changes into a lifted set of ill-fitting street clothes. He hardly recognizes himself, even though he looks more like Steve Rogers now than he has in months. By the time the morning light evaporates the dew on the overgrown front lawn, Steve is gone.

He catches an early morning bus across town because it’s less conspicuous than walking. He transfers buses downtown and gives five dollars to a homeless man who can’t seem to stop staring at his face at the bus station. He takes another bus, burying his face in the sports section of a newspaper for the half hour ride. He needs another transfer but he’s out of bus fare, so he walks the last leg of the journey. No one pays him a second glance.

It has been so long since he’s immersed himself in a crowd that he feels alien; he wonders if this is how a skrull feels, wearing a human face, but knowing he’s _other_ inside.

He arrives to the street he traced the message to. The neighborhood is mostly abandoned. The windows of many of the houses have been covered up with graffiti’d plywood, and the inhabited ones have curtains drawn tight, and chain link fences between the street and the front door.

617 Knight Drive.

The house is a two story with boarded over windows and dandelions growing between the cracks in the drive way. Steve worries he must have the wrong place. It doesn’t look like anyone has been here for a long, long time. He stands there for a moment staring, the sun warming his shoulders, and it feels like the house stares back. The dark windows and the sagging porch roof frown, an empty-eyed skull.

~~_Like the Tony’s faceplate with no life behind the eyes._ ~~

Then, he sees something. Steve notices that the padlock on the front door is shiny and new, standing out like a sore thumb from the rust and ruin of the rest of the place.

Someone _has_ been here recently, and cared to lock up shop behind themselves.

There’s that feeling again, in his stomach.

Steve breaks in through a low window in the back. He gingerly pushes in the shards of glass clinging inside the frame. He swings himself over the sill and his boots land on the shattered pane, glass crunching beneath his soles. Dust motes swirls, micro galaxies, in a sunbeam around his head.

Save for a few tipped over filing cabinets, and abandoned electrical extension plugs, the house is empty. His footsteps creak, the only interruption to the eery silence. It feels like someone might pop out from around a corner and yell _boo._

“Hello?” he calls out. There’s a lump in his throat and his pulse feels electric; he isn’t being smart, he isn’t being stealthy. He’s being stupid. He’s being hopeful. He can’t help it.

“Tony? Are you here?”

He hasn’t spoken that name in a long time.

~~_Sacrilege._ ~~

No reply. He crosses the floor, and peers into the empty living room. He finds an abandoned office. A rotten sitting room. A walk in closet that even the mice have abandoned. The only sign of life is a recently deceased spider on a dusty windowsill. His hopes begin to sink. It’s too quiet for anything to be alive here. It doesn’t make sense.

A faint rattling sound startles him. It sounds as though it comes from directly beneath his feet.

_Ting, Ting._

A shiver runs up Steve's spine. 

“Oh my God,” Steve whispers. He turns the corner and finds the basement door, left ajar. Faintly, the smell of stale smoke wafts up the stairs. And the smell of stale sick. He pushes the creaky door open, and descends into near total darkness. He wishes he would have thought to bring a flashlight. He feels around in the dark. His fingertips are his eyes. The only light comes from the open door at the top of the stairs. It takes a minute for his eyes to adjust.

The walls are damp and cold, concrete. He stumbles over a cord running across the floor of the hall. His hand lands on a doorknob.

Steve can hardly breathe. This has to be it.

If ever there was a God, let this be it.

It turns easily in his palm; whoever left here must have been in enough of a hurry to leave it unlocked.

The tiny amount of light falls into the dark room, and there he is. Steve blinks as though to clear the specter from his eyes, but it's him: the ghost Steve has been chasing. Hunched over, bony arms curled around naked legs, Tony is sitting there in chains, staring at Steve with vacant shock.

“Tony,” Steve breathes, frozen to the spot.

Tony shivers. He doesn’t say anything. His eyes are impossibly wide, made even larger ringed with filth and soot and dark shadow. His pupils are blown out from even the tiny bit of light.

~~_He probably hasn't seen light in a long time._ ~~

The inertia gives way, and Steve rushes into the room. All he feels is cascading relief. The hatred, the loathing, the anger, the hurt, the betrayal— it’s all gone somewhere else, for now. In his most primitive, incoherent thoughts, all Steve can muster right now is how glad he is to see Tony alive.

He kneels at Tony’s side, but with a breath between them. Tony looks terrified and disoriented, and painfully breakable. He’s has lost a lot of weight, and and every bit of it shows because he’s been left totally nude. It isn’t pretty; his skin is grey and mottled purple, covered in sores and cuts and infections. Purple, scabbing track marks litter his neck, over what look to be healed needle marks. The room stinks, and Tony is covered in soot and his own filth. His hair is so oily that it looks wet. And no matter how hard Steve looks, something about Tony is translucent. Spectral.

_What have they done to you?_

Steve realizes Tony’s lips are moving, but no sound is coming out.

“Don’t talk, let me give you some water. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” Steve says, reaching into his bag and producing one of his jugs. He isn’t sure that Tony has the strength to hold it himself. “Can I— I’m going to hold this up to your mouth. It’s okay. Just drink slowly. It’s okay.”

He keeps repeating it, because it’s all he has to offer. There’s a sort of desperation, an urgent helplessness, that you feel when you find someone you love in such terrible condition. It’s a visceral reaction, something wired into the deepest, oldest part of the human brain. Steve would give Tony the arm off his body if Tony needed it to live, right now.

He helps Tony drink until he splutters, and water runs down his clavicle. He coughs for a long time, gasping and choking, his bony rib cage heaving for air, so hard Steve irrationally worries about him breaking himself. Steve doesn’t think twice before putting a hand on the knobs of Tony’s spine and rubbing slow circles into the skin. Then he realizes that physical contact may be distressing, after God knows what hell Tony’s been through— but that was what his mother used to do for him, when he couldn’t catch his breath. That feels like forever ago, now.

Tony doesn’t object; he relaxes into the touch, and he finally catches his breath.

“More,” he wheezes.

“I don’t want you to make yourself sick,” Steve says.

“Please.”

Steve can’t deny him. He helps Tony drink again. Tony immediately gets sick. It’s mostly just water that he spits back up, but he looks miserable, and Steve feels to blame.

“’M sorry,” Tony says. “Sorry.” Steve’s face screws up in heartbreak. This isn’t about him, right now. He tries to put himself on the back burner. Whatever distress he’s feeling, seeing Tony like this, can’t compare to whatever Tony has been through. Still, it’s impossible to control his reaction when Tony’s blubbering apologies with vomit on his chin.

“Don’t be sorry, Tony. It’s okay. It’s alright, we’re okay. You’re going to be fine. We’re going to get you home.”

Tony nods and tries to smile. It doesn’t reach his glassy eyes. He can’t tear them away from Steve, as if he’s scared to blink and make Steve disappear. Steve honestly feels the same way.

“You know, I’m not going anywhere. I’m real,” Steve says, slowly. Tony seems relieved, but like he maybe doesn’t quite believe it yet. Steve knows a thing or two about that; he’s spent a long time teaching himself how to prepare for disappointment.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Tony says. “I’m glad you found me.”

“What happened to you—” Steve begins, and he doesn’t know what to say about the condition Tony’s in. Whatever horrors happened here, he knows he’ll never get the whole story. That’s okay. Some things are too dark to say out loud.

“The skrull,” Tony says, pinched, troubled expression, as if suddenly remembering. “There’s a skrull, Steve. It isn’t really me. There was a double.”

If _only_ this was entirely new information to Steve. He already knows, all too well. The word ‘skrull’ brings flashes of gore and smoke and viscera crawling across his vision. He blinks it away. He makes himself smile.

“I know. It’s okay. He’s dead. I know it wasn’t you,” Steve reassures. “Don’t worry about that now, okay? We don’t have to talk about it now. Let’s get you warm.”

He removes his shirt and slides it over Tony’s head. It’s enormous on him, but Tony’s skin is like ice and it feels wrong not to afford him the dignity of a little coverage.

Tony winces, and talks with urgency, slurring his words, “Some of it was me. The Reg’stration— I only just started ‘membering again. I couldn’t rem’ber. But now I do. You hate me now. I don’ know what to do. I don’ know why you would come.”

“Stop,” Steve says. He can’t do that right now.

“I arrested our friends the day I offered you amnesty. I don’t know if I was doing the right thing. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’ll happen, I don’t want to go back.”

“We both did things we regret,” Steve says in a quiet voice. “Please, don’t tire yourself out talking about it. Not now, Tony. It doesn’t matter now. Later. You need to save your energy.”

He could never express how much he regrets. He still believes the Registration is wrong. He believes that things happened that didn’t need to happen. But things have changed; he’s seen that this is bigger than them, and that tearing each other apart doesn’t do any good. Tony had been right about one thing, and that was that they _need_ each other’s help to do the right thing, whatever it is.

“I don’ know how you can forgive me. I don’ know how to go back, I can’t face it. Don’ know what to _do_ ,” Tony says, panic and anguish in his face. Steve pulls him closer. Tony tenses in his arms, and then relaxes.

“I don’t know, either,” Steve admits. They had made a mess of things. There is nothing but a mess to go back to. “But, I know we’ll figure it out together this time. I can’t lose you again.”

Tony is quiet. He rests his head on Steve’s chest. Tony isn’t a small man, he’s tall and broad, so his skeleton-like body feels clumsy and strange in Steve’s arms.

Steve continues, “Whatever is next, we’ll do that together. Whatever the answer it, whatever the way out of this, it’ll take both of us. And that means getting you somewhere safe. You need to rest. You need medical care. You need to recover—”

A slow, wheezing breath comes from Tony.

“Tony?” Steve says. He looks down.

Tony has fallen asleep with his head against Steve’s chest. Steve thinks, _maybe that’s for the best_. With tentative fingers, he pushes the hair out of Tony’s face, and his own heart beats faster. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt such a strong need to protect somebody.

~~_Steve loves Tony so violently it scares him, and he’s seen and hated the person he becomes without Tony in his life._ ~~

On an impulse, he puts his lips against Tony’s filthy forehead, and presses a tiny kiss to his skin. He smells real. Feels real. Tony doesn’t even stir.

Whatever comes next, they’ll face it together.

* * *


	4. the closest thing to absolution

four

_the closest thing to absolution_

* * *

The next few weeks pass by in a blur.

It takes a long time for the broken pieces to heal. Things don’t get better right away. Steve has to drop Tony off at a private hospital anonymously and leave, because SHIELD is still out for his blood. But they talk every day, over the private line of communication. Tony’s body is broken, but it’s his mind that really suffered, and Steve hopes that his words of encouragement in Tony’s head ease the burden, even marginally. Tony never talks about what went on in that basement, and Steve is reluctant to answer some of the questions Tony asks about what went on under the dictatorship of his Skrull double. So they find other things to talk about.

The weather. It’s been warming up. A streak of cloudless days.

With Extremis, and the power of modern medicine, Tony recovers physically in a few weeks, enough to be released from hospitalization. He’s still real thin when Steve sees him make his first re-appearance on TV, and he still walks like every step exhausts him. That far away look in his eyes appears when he’s not talking, and Steve wonders what Tony thinks about when he drifts away like that. In a sick way, it’s almost comforting to see him like this, in contrast with the memories Steve has of the skrull Tony strutting around with that sickening bravado. Tony doesn’t say much on the news, and he only answers carefully vetted, pre-planned questions, and Steve knows why.

SHIELD’s investigation into the skrull invasion is so secret that the number of people working on it can be counted on one hand. Tony can’t say much about his experience without compromising the investigation, and while it’s obviously painful for him not to be able to distance himself from the atrocities committed by his double, there’s some level of relief, too, that he’s excused from explaining himself.

Then someone leaks it, a picture of the skrull’s green corpse in the damaged armor, and the world explodes.

It’s the catalyst for rapid change, and a blow to international security. The consequences are a mix of good and bad. With the news out that Tony was _not_ Tony all along, they’re able to leverage this against SHIELD; Tony secures pardons for all surviving members of the resistance in record time. The hero prisons are shut down. The victims are released. Steve worries about him working himself back into a hospital bed, but at the same time, he’s familiar with the haunted look in Tony’s eyes, and he knows that Tony can’t rest until he’s righted some wrongs. Steve has the feeling as well. Guilt is a powerful motivator, and they both have a lot to atone for. Still, it’s hard to watch Tony hold himself accountable for things he _didn’t_ do, and rushing headlong back into all of this takes an obvious toll on Tony’s mental health and recovery.

All Steve can do is be there.

* * *

"Is it real?" Tony asks.

He's seated in a wheelchair with a blanket in his lap by his desk. He doesn't use the wheelchair outside of his private quarters, and never in front of anyone but Steve (after all, Steve saw him in much worse condition.) But sometimes he gets so tired that walking is a chore for him, and after the first time he had stood up too fast only to collapse, Steve had pleaded with him to work something out.

"Is what real?" Steve asks, blinking awake. He had dozed off in the office. Tony had been reading something. Steve had been pretending to sign papers, but he had finished hours ago.

Tony's lips part, and then close.

"What're you seeing?" Steve says, straightening his back. He tries to look where Tony's looking. All he sees is empty air.

"Nothing," Tony says. He doesn't blink and his eyes go glassy. His skin goes white.

"What can I do?" Steve asks. He feels useless at times like this. When Tony is obviously suffering some loose thread of an alternate, more terrifying reality. But Steve can't help, if Tony doesn't let him. At times, it's irrationally infuriating. He has no right to be angry at Tony for with holding his own private horrors, and yet, it makes Steve feel so fucking inadequate and useless. As ineffectual as one of Tony's shadow.

"Nothing," Tony says.

"Please. Anything. Let me help."

Tony looks at Steve over his shoulder, fingers bunched up and fiddling with the edge of his blanket. Steve suddenly feels less than two inches tall, and utterly ashamed with himself. He sees it in Tony's eyes, that he knows he's a burden. 

"Nothing."

* * *

Tony discovers his fully stocked bar cabinet. Steve had forgotten, with everything else going on, until he walks into Tony's kitchen with a bag of bagels and finds Tony kneeling on the cold tile floor, turning a half-finished bottle of bourbon over in his palms. Steve's heart leaps into his throat. He automatically assumes the worst.

Tony says, "This isn't even my brand," as if it's some cosmic joke. 

He doesn't sound intoxicated. Steve sets the bagels on the counter. He kneels at Tony's side. Tony doesn't look at him.

"I should have cleaned this out for you," Steve says slowly. "I'm sorry you had to be exposed to this."

"It isn't my brand," Tony says. He sets the bottle back in the cupboard. "I never liked Woodford Reserve."

Steve realizes Tony hasn't touched a drop; he's just looking. His shoulders sag in quiet relief.

"You'd think," Steve says, "That you'd have the same taste. Same tastebuds, and all." It feels strange to speak about so cavalierly. The double. His time living here, in Tony's home, wearing Tony's skin. Steve thinks this might be the first time Tony has directly mentioned it in any form.

"My dad liked Woodford Reserve," Tony says.

"Oh."

"I just, always avoided it on principal," he says. He closes the liquor cabinet. "I guess some things are genetic. Funny, huh?"  
  
Steve isn't sure if it's funny. 

* * *

When he’s finally able to come out of the shadows, Steve doesn’t know what to spend his freedom on outside of being with Tony. He’s grown accustomed to hiding. He doesn’t want to be seen, for a while. The public wants him to speak, but Steve finds himself _emphatically_ out of words. He’s tired. Supporting Tony in his recovery has been exhausting; Steve would do it again in a heartbeat, and doesn’t plan on going anywhere, but the burden they’re carrying together is enormous, and Steve’s shoulders are only so big. Tony was fundamentally broken, in some way he still can’t verbalize to Steve, or any therapist. Steve feels constantly helpless, and the joy of having Tony back and seeing things in the world improve is eclipsed by the feeling of being stuck in a new kind of hole.

That, and his own nightmares and neuroses haven’t gone anywhere just because Tony’s going through something worse. It’s a delicate balance that he finds himself perpetually misjudging. Overextending himself, and then feeling the worry too hard when he feels in the dark. It would be easier, he thinks, if they could just enjoy a little peace together.

He fantasizes about a white beach and no cell reception, and no paper work, just the two of them, remembering how to be human together.

* * *

He moves in with Tony gradually, and under false pretenses.

“I should be here as a second set of eyes on the paperwork,” Steve suggests. Tony never argues; this is, after all, always what he wanted. Steve doesn’t coddle when it comes to the work. He takes red pen to the stacks of legislature and forms and speeches and approvals. He tears them to shreds and makes few concessions, and Tony makes every change Steve demands, and there’s surprisingly little to talk about. Sometimes Steve wonders, always after the fact, if Tony remember how to object. If Steve's inadvertently taking advantage of some defensive passivity that developed in their time apart.

He tries not to dwell on it, but he tries to check with Tony more about small things. 

“Someone should be around to keep an eye on your health,” Steve says, and Tony puts up a bit of protest to that.

“I’m fine, Steve. I’m mostly fully recovered. A few more months on my diet and I’ll be weight restored, too. It’s nothing you need to worry about,” he says. What he doesn’t say is, _I don’t want to burden you. I don’t want to seem like someone who can’t take care of himself. I don’t want you to get tired of me. I don’t want you to see how ruined I am_. Steve sees it in the line of Tony’s shoulders and the downcast look about his face.

“I’m going to worry, whether or not you let me help.”

“It’s fine.”

“Can you even reach to change the bandages on your back?” Steve asks, knowing the answer is no.

“No, but—”

“Just let me help. It isn’t like I have anywhere better to be,” Steve says. He plays it off like Tony would be doing him a favor, and it’s true.

He’s relentless, and while he knows Tony is embarrassed by his own need, he thinks that he’s lonely, too. The loneliness beats out the shame eventually, and Tony finally agrees. Steve is guilty and relieved; he shouldn't have pushed, maybe. But he thinks this is for the best. He thinks Tony won't let anyone else near enough to see how damaged he's become, and he has a fear-- one he dares not put into words-- of what might happen to Tony, alone.

It turns out to be okay.

Steve cleans Tony's bed sores and bandages them every night. Runs his fingers over jutting ribs, frowning. He hounds Tony about following the nutrition plan, and Tony acts annoyed but admits to constantly forgetting. Steve remembers things that Tony forgets, and Steve doesn’t mean to think too much of himself, but he gets the distinct impression that his constant presence makes it a little easier for Tony to maintain his sobriety through the troubling months, too.

Between the endless work on legislature and pardons and haggling with politicians, and Steve’s involvement in Tony’s (still a work in progress) recovery, they fall into a sort of comfortable rhythm. Things aren’t like they were before, but they’re not really worse. It’s just different. Steve knows he isn't perfect. He isn't the best caretaker. He doesn't have the training to tiptoe around the trauma in the right ways, and he knows sometimes he does more harm than good. But he learns, and he listens, and he thinks it's going to be okay.

They don’t have to say much, but they spend almost every hour of the day in each others’ quiet companionship. And sometimes, after staying up too long and overexerting himself, if Tony falls asleep with his head on Steve’s shoulder, paperwork and takeout containers sprawled out on the coffee table in front of them, Steve doesn’t mind. He doesn’t move him, he just lets him sleep. He figures, he needs the rest. He figures, if Tony feels so safe in Steve's presence, he should be flattered.

~~_He sits still as a statue for hours, just to feel his warmth and count Tony’s steady, sleeping breaths that promise he’s still alive._ ~~

Tony gains more weight. It’s a struggle, but with Steve around, they keep regular mealtimes. He stops looking quite so fragile, to Steve’s immense relief. He starts insisting on taking the stairs instead of the elevator, and Steve insists on going with him in case he needs helps halfway down. Tony loathes the coddling, so Steve is careful not to make a fuss about it when Tony gets winded and has to grip Steve’s hand for extra support on the last flight.

* * *

It’s easy and slow, falling back in love. It's the least complicated thing.

* * *

It happens between the fibers of gauze bandages, and between pages of dense file folders, and fortune cookies, and late nights, and outbursts of weeping in the kitchen politely ignored. No words needed; there had been so many harsh words before, and they had both lived through so much, that Steve thinks, maybe the quiet is what they both really need. When Tony has panic attacks brought on by things that Steve doesn’t understand; he doesn’t ask. He knows he can’t fix it.

He learns where Tony keeps his prescriptions and he brings him a pill and a glass of water.

* * *

Tony throws a plate. It bounces off the wall unbroken and lands on the floor, wobbling. Steve doesn't know if Tony is here or there, but he's mad and there are tears streaming down his cheeks, but it does nothing to make him look less feral. Teeth bared behind stretched lips, moving like an animal. Terrified and infuriated.

"Take a breath," Steve says, from the doorway.

"Fuck you," Tony snaps.

"What's going on?" 

Tony draws him arm back like he's going to hit Steve. Steve leans easily to the side and dodges. Tony tries to hit him again. Steve hates to do it, but he catches Tony's wrist in his hand, immobilizing his arm. Tony's eyes bug out of his head. He starts thrashing, beating at Steve's chest with his other fist. It doesn't really hurt.

"Let me fucking go, you fucking asshole, why the fuck are you even _here_?" he howls.

The struggling tapers off. Steve releases his wrist, horrified with himself that it looks bruised. He hadn't meant to hold him so hard.

"Why are you here, Steve?" Tony says.

Steve still doesn't know what triggered the melt down. 

"For you," he answers honestly.

Tony rubs his wrist.

"You'll get sick of it. You'll get mad again."

"Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Steve says. He doesn't try and reassure Tony, because he knows he won't believe it. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to leave, but he doesn't say so. He just says, "Right now, I'm here. For you. No matter what."

Things get easier when Steve stops every thought that starts with a sense of obligation, or Tony being incompetent. He can't help but want to take care of him, but it doesn't actually work that way. He had said that he's here _for Tony_ ; it takes him some time to realize what that means. He isn't here to alleviate his own guilt or anxiety, or satisfy a savior complex by playing nurse.

It gets easier when he lets himself acknowledge that he needs Tony's company just as much as Tony needs his, and that they're both vulnerable right now. But he isn't any more likely to fix Tony than Tony is to fix Steve.

* * *

When Steve has nightmares about green flesh and crunching bone and so much _blood_ — he often finds himself suddenly awaken by Tony gently nudging Steve with his foot. They meet eyes and Steve’s rapid breathing slows, and his shirt sticks to the back of his neck with cold sweat, and he could never express how much he appreciates Tony’s silence.

And Steve appreciates the fantastic water pressure and self-warming bathroom floors, when he showers off the sour stink of nightmares, after living for so long without any amenities at all. He learns to let himself enjoy small pleasures of the flesh, of which Tony's home is in no short supply. The coffee is always freshly ground. He never goes cold or hungry.

They both eat better.

Tony finally makes a healthy weight. Steve can see the difference in Tony’s body— he looks more like a hero and less like a victim— but that’s more in the way he’s carrying himself than anything else.

Tony comes into the kitchen, where Steve is preparing grilled cheese. The counter is littered with plastic Kraft singles wrappers, and a knife sticks out of a tub of spreadable butter. The TV is playing in the background, but they keep it off the news stations when they can avoid it. Today, there’s a baseball game that Steve’s been keeping half an ear on.

(He’ll maintain to his grave that the game has changed beyond repair, and that it was another thing entirely back in his day— but that doesn’t stop him from tuning in.)

“I’m making lunch,” Steve says as Tony appears on the other side of the kitchen island, carrying an iPad and a cup of cold coffee. “It’s grilled cheese.”

“I thought we were out of butter.”

“I found some of the fake stuff in the back,” Steve says.

“I love you,” Tony says.

Steve stops breathing.

Steve sets down the spatula.

Tony’s hands hang awkwardly at his sides, and he’s working his jaw anxiously. When Steve looks at him, he sees Tony forcing himself to look straight ahead, none of that anxiously looking at his feet that he used to do all the time that made him seem like such a victim.

Steve wipes his hands on the dish towel hanging from the stove. “What?” He says.

“I love you,” Tony says. Less certain of himself, like he’s lost his courage, but it’s too late to quit now. “I’m in love with you.”

The grilled cheese sizzles in the pan, and starts to smell a little burnt. Steve had always imagined he would feel really overwhelmed if this moment ever happened outside of his daydreams. Like he wouldn’t know what to say.

He feels calm. Maybe because things aren't perfect, and they're both still fucked up, and struggling, so it doesn't feel like an ending. It doesn't feel like either of them expect love to fix anything. It doesn't feel like they'll end up disappointed. 

_Maybe it’s because there are a lot of ways to say I love you without saying it with words, so it doesn’t feel like the first time._

He steps out from around the kitchen island, abandoning the stove, so that there is no barrier between them. Steve’s wearing an apron. Tony’s wearing one of his old suits, which he’s been doing a lot more now that he can actually fill them out. Steve takes a deep breath.

“I love you, too,” Steve says.

Tony’s eyebrows pinch together, and he looks so baffled that he almost looks mad. It’s cute, the way he pinches his face up when he’s really thinking. That serious, furrowed brow. But then he swiftly throws his arms—getting stronger every day— around Steve’s neck, and he kisses him.

Steve’s startled, but then he shuts his eyes and leans into his, his hands going to Tony’s waist. He doesn’t feel like a skeleton anymore. He feels like a man, a substantial person, real. Warm. Whole. Steve’s not afraid to break him. Tony’s mouth is warm, and the tickle of his mustache makes Steve’s nose wrinkle involuntarily.

It’s a different kiss entirely than when the skrull tried to kiss Steve as Tony, and Steve takes it as dizzying confirmation that this is meant to be, between them. This is all he’s ever wanted.

Tony pulls back first. “Is this okay?” he asks, nervous. Steve can’t help it; he grins. The courage Tony’s shown, surviving everything he has survived, getting back on the horse, making the world better. Healing. Confessing his feelings. Being the first to kiss Steve. And yet, he still sounds like he’s ready for someone to tell him he’s bad at any moment.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” Steve says. “It’s good. Very good.”

“Okay,” Tony says. “Good.”

Tony kisses Steve again. Steve’s only a little taller, and he bows his neck to meet him, and their bodies press close together. Warmth radiates between them.

“You taste like toothpaste,” Steve says. He’s flying right now, and he thinks _this is what happiness feels like_. It’s been a long time since either of them have been happy.

“I just brushed my teeth,” Tony says solemnly.

Steve kisses him on the mouth, and then pecks his forehead. He never wants to let go, but he thinks, there’s going to be time. There’s forever in front of them. He’s not going anywhere.

“Well, you’ll have to brush them again later. I made grilled cheese,” Steve says.

“Smells burnt,” Tony points out. They’re black on the bottom. He steps toward the stove and turns off the burner. His cheeks feel flushed, and it’s like every bit of skin that touched Tony’s skin is tingling.

“Sorry. I was distracted,” Steve says. Tony smiles. It’s that smile Steve fell in love with so long ago. That smile Steve missed when it was replaced with a false one, the smile he missed when Tony was gone. He hopes to see a lot more of it, going forward. 

“That’s okay,” Tony says, “I love you anyways.”

And it is okay.

* * *

end


	5. ART

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is all the art meant to accompany this story!

* * *

"The empty feeling emboldens him. Steve’s fingertips tingle. He swallows a lump in his throat and reaches over, gently taking the empty helmet and faceplate in his hands, the skull. He handles it delicately, like a faberge egg.

_Grave robber._

He turns it over in his hands, barely allowing himself to breathe. The metal is ice against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again, out loud. The dark eye slits stare back at him."

* * *

"As he loses consciousness, he sinks into a dark fog, some endless night, where a dozen green hands reach down his throat and pull him apart from the inside out."

* * *

"Tony’s eyebrows pinch together, and he looks so baffled that he almost looks mad. It’s cute, the way he pinches his face up when he’s really thinking. That serious, furrowed brow. But then he swiftly throws his arms— getting stronger every day— around Steve’s neck, and he kisses him."

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading what feels to me like a stupid long story, i really hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> https://ghosthan.tumblr.com/


End file.
